Colombiana
Time Out New York Project: Issue #826, August 25-September 7, 2011 (ONLINE ONLY)
★★★☆☆
Dir. Olivier Megaton. 2011. PG-13. 107mins. Zoe Saldana, Michael Vartan, Amandla Stenberg.
Cataleya Restrepo (Saldana) has had a hard life. In the lengthy opening section of the latest glossily entertaining gewgaw from house Luc Besson (who coscripted with Robert Mark Kamen), we see her as a young girl (Stenberg) living in Colombia, where the malicious local drug lord has her parents killed. After a daring escape — jumping from favela roofs; sliding into stinky sewers — she makes her way to Chicago, where her underworld uncle trains her as an assassin. Soon enough, she’s filling out skin-tight cat-burglar suits with catcall-worthy sensuousness, plotting a ridiculously elaborate revenge on her mom and dad’s murderers, and getting some on-the-side nookie with the guy from Alias. The jittery action aesthetic is a bit grating (three cuts minimum per roundhouse kick), but the spectacularly named Olivier Megaton still manages to deliver the goods, especially during a close-quarters smackdown that gives new meaning to the term “pistol whipped.” And Besson’s empathetic guiding hand is evident throughout, from the opening massacre (which is kept offscreen, the camera entirely focused on young Cataleya’s terrified face) to a strangely melancholy finale that makes terrific use of Johnny Cash’s cover of Nine Inch Nail’s “Hurt.”—Keith Uhlich