Colombiana

It's Colombia, it's twenty or so years ago, and a Colombian drug cartel is having a bit of an internal squabble. The squabble ends with the head of the cartel sending a hit squad after one of the higher up guys in the cartel; he and his wife are killed in front of their young daughter, who flees and under her father's instructions seeks help from the US consulate in Bogota, trading some information (on a suspiciously modern looking memory card) for a US passport. She then finds her uncle in Chicago, who takes her in.

Twenty years later, she's Zoe Saldana, and has become an assassin working for her uncle, with a hidden agenda; leaving a calling card on her victims, trying to send a message to the now-deep-underground cartel boss who killed her family, in the hopes that he will break cover looking for her, and she'll be able to find him and kill him.

There's very much a sense that this film is a derivative offshoot of Leon. In that there's a young girl whose family is murdered in front of her; however, in this case, the Leon character is missing, and she's taken in by the guy who arranges the hits, so she has to train and become the unbeatable assassin for herself. And in a twisted way, that's kind of an empowering message; don't have a man do it for you, women can be just as lethal all by themselves. And Zoe Saldana puts in a pretty great turn as the calculating assassin. She's not Jean Reno, but then who is?*

Unfortunately, Jean Reno is not the only person glaringly missing from the film. Gary Oldman is also missing. This is a bigger problem, because they've not really got a decent replacement in for him. Lennie James is good as the FBI guy tracking her movements, but it's a decent, human performance. There's no great villainous antagonist here; there *is* the cartel enforcer who killed her family, who's in that role, played by Jordi Molla, but it's nowhere near as awesome a part as Gary Oldman. In short, nothing as awesome as this line happens.

So, really, that's the review in a nutshell. It's a assassination revenge thriller that's a bit like Leon, but a good 40% less awesome all around.


* Answer: Jean Reno is.