NEW MOVIE REVIEW : COLUMBIANA

I went into this movie thinking I would see something in a straight revenge flick due to all the previews and trailers I have seen. I was half right.

Movie starts off well with the family of Cataleya ( Zoe Saldana) when she is a little girl in the year 1992 getting slaughtered by a vengeful drug lord. As she is confronted by their killer she shows a lot of spunk for a girl her age and what ensues is a great foot chase within the 3rd world country.

As she makes her way to Chicago through the contacts that her father gave her before he died she shows that though book smart she is also world smart. She meets up with her uncle and asks for him to show him the way. She is presented a choice of which way to wants to pursue and after that choice we jump 15 years to 2007 in the city of Los Angeles.

To get into a jail she commits a crime that gets her close to her target. Obviously we know what is going to happen to the victim but how we get to that is the intriguing part. She has now combine her book and street smarts and with her very lean body knows how to work around any corner or problem that arises as she strives to finish the job that she set herself to do.

We find out that this is one of many targets she goes after and that some of these are actually a side job. She wants to get to her main target which is the drug lord which put her down this life path and finally she gets his attention.

The movie slows down in the middle as they try to flesh out her character and mute her killer instinct a bit. I guess everyone needs love in life but her love interest just seems a tad shoe horned into the plot. I am all for a someone with layers but I wanted a straight revenge flick as most have the man as the protagonist and having a woman do it was more intriguing to me.

After a personal turning point she sets up the end game for the her and the drug lord. She tracks him down to his hiding place and armed to the gills with guns and against supposed insurmountable odds she barges right in for some mano o womano fighting. The last part of the movie has great action sequences and the bathroom scene is one the best recently that I have seen. Obviously as this is a revenge flick we all know how it ends for the bad guy. She trys to get a little personal closure and she moves on as her demon in her life has been taken care of.

Rating : 2.5/5 - Movie started off without of promise but lagged in the middle part but finished off with a bang. I like Zoe and think she is a decent actor who has been seen recently in Star Trek and Avatar and she shows promise in the action genre. She and her uncle are the best parts of the movie and if this had better writing I believe it would have been genre flick. This is a good vehicle movie for Zoe and I hope this springboards her to bigger and better things. Nothing wrong with having good action females on screen.

As a side note, part of the movie is shown at a CIA office in Chicago in 2007 and has a big Obama portrait on the wall. We all know that these offices have the president on the wall. So either Chicago hates current President Bush and puts up Senator Obama or they knew the future already and put Obama up there. Either way I am a stickler for "errors" in movies and that was the glaring on in this movie.