COLOMBIANA, while a highly entertaining revenge film with a strong female lead, is let down by clichéd storytelling and lack of character development. The story is about Cataleya, a woman whose parents were murdered when she was a child. She then becomes an assassin who sets out to avenge her parents' deaths. As far as the action is concerned, I was pleasantly surprised that Olivier Megaton reined in his tendency to over-shoot and edit. The action sequences were all well put-together and comprehensible, although a final act fight scene in a bathroom kind of dipped back into what I generally don't like about modern action sequences. As far as acting was concerned, nobody gave a bad performance (even the actress who played young Cataleya), but it's a shame that they had such a poor script to work with. The weakest part of this movie, and what really does it in, is the story. The audience is never given a window into who Cataleya is or even care aside from the fact that her parents were murdered in front of her. As an adult, she is emotionally distant and has very little personality. Sure, you could say that it's part of the character but I didn't find it very compelling. There's also the issue of everything in the plot being implausible and convoluted. Again, this is escapist entertainment but a lot of those elements really took me out of the movie. Ultimately, though, I had a decent time. The film is by no means boring, but there are a lot of better ones which tackle similar subject matter, e.g., Luc Besson's Leon, to which this is perhaps too similar.
Review of Colombiana
