Colombiana

Don’t Mess With The Colombiana Assassin - Cataleya
Colombiana, PG-13, **, Zoe Saldana, Amandla Stenberg, Michael Vartan, Lennie James, Cliff Curtis. Tri Star, TFI films. Director Oliver Megaton. Length: 108 minutes.

The movie begins in Bogata, Columbia as a family is trying to leave the country and start a new life. Cataleya Restepo (Amandla Stenberg) is the very young daughter of the drug dealer leaving for a new life.
Unfortunately, everything ends up very bad. Cataleya’s mother and father are killed, but she has the skills and ability to escape with physical cleverness, a business card, and a computer chip. Cataleya uses a knife on a bad guy, has to race through the streets of Bogata, jump from the roofs of houses, and dive into a drainage opening in the street. Finally, she reaches safety, and is brought to the United States by law enforcement officers in order to keep her safe.
This is not her plans. She escapes from the drug force and finds her uncle (Michael Vartan) in Chicago. She is not interested in anything, but revenge. Reluctantly, her uncle trains her to be an assassin. The audience picks up 15 years later, and Cataleya (Zoe Saldana) takes over the role as a grownup. She embraces the assassin profession with cold blooded intent. As she gets older, the body count she racks up grows enormously.
Her training in this occupation is for one purpose. She is determined to hunt down and kill those responsible for the deaths of her mother and father. Her plan is innovative and clandestine. She has only one friend. Michael Delany (Michael Vartan) is an artist who lives in a loft filled with lots of paintings and art supplies. They are lovers.
Michael wants to know more about her, but she refuses to tell him anything. It would destroy her cover if she reveals very much to him.
Unfortunately, Michael becomes too persistent and nosey. This leads to problems.
In all of her missions to dispose of her targets, she is precise, careful, and successful. Cataleya is one bad lady. To take a slight bit of liberty with a Jim Croce song, “Don’t tug on superman’s cape, don’t spit into the wind, don’t pull the mask off of old lone ranger, and don’t mess around with Cataleya.”
Just remember her goal is to kill those responsible for her parents’ deaths. The quote, “Before seeking revenge dig two graves,” is a lesson to heed. What it seems to mean is, “the one seeking revenge will lose their inner self.”
The fight scenes are cartoonish and over the top. The feats Cataleya accomplishes are outside the boundaries of reality.
When seeking revenge, lots of people get hurt. Many of them are innocent people. I may be trying to hard to find a few good elements in this movie, but it does have a meaning. Most of the acting lacked sincerity, and if the audience watches closely at one particular scene, the viewers will be able to figure out what is going to happen at the very end of the movie.
Colombiana had some entertaining scenes, but not enough to recommend it very highly.
The song, Hurt by Johnny Cash plays during the credits. It will sum up the meaning of what happens when undertaking a personal revenge mission.