Colombiana (2011, directed by Olivier Megaton)

Young Cataleya's family are assassinated; she escapes to America and to her gang boss uncle (Cliff Curtis) where she grows up to become Zoe Saldana, a killer-for-hire who moonlights as a revenge-obsessed murderer leaving notes on corpses in attempts to draw her family's killers out from hiding. 





Every few years, Luc Besson revisits a favourite theme, that of the female-as-assassin. La Femme Nikita, Leon / The Professional as examples. Here (Besson's co-screenwriter and producer) those two films are spliced together. And that's about it. Cue a series of kills and reprisal kills until the inevitable showdown. 

Having someone as decent an actor and as visually striking as Saldana play a psychotic doesn't excuse the barrenness of thought here; thinking about the movie soon makes it a queasy experience. That may be a bit heavy for what's presumably intended as a bit of action fluff, but it's all there in the subtext. A weird movie, and pretty unpleasant if you ponder it for a moment, and no amount of glossy cinematography, duff plotting and insufficient costuming for the lead will get over the bad taste at the centre of Colombiana. Not Europa Corp's finest moment.