Colombiana: Commando with Brains and a Heart

December 19th, 2011 | By Rono | 548 views | No Comments »

Late review, but I’ve been kind a busy. Here is a movie with fast, relentless action and no time to breathe coming to DVD and Blu-Ray this week. Colombiana relates the quest of a determined woman, named Cataleya, looking to avenge her parents’ murder.

Colombiana's Zoe Saldana kicks some serious butt without breaking a sweat.

In the setup, The little girl’s cool head in a excessively stressful situation is a tad unlikely, but hey, it’s a freaking action movie! What are you gonna do? She had obviously been prepared for that moment since birth. Beautifully played by Amandla Stenberg, young Cataleya wins us over very early on: you gotta love the camera staying on her face while her parents die. Good stuff!

Young Cataleya (Amandla Stenberg) demonstrates the emotional charge of this movie early on. A star in rising.

Very early, the young girl finds herself from Mexico into the United States where a memory card left by her father earns her a passport. In Chicago, she expresses her desire to become a killer. So her uncle (the versatile Cliff Curtis) teaches her the value of a good education. The demonstration is a little over the top, but serves the purpose.

60 minutes in, and the heart of the movie is inescapable. Wait until she tells her childhood dreams… The story walks a tight rope when she catches up with and threatens the FBI agent who’s been tracking her, but I promise it’s worth it. The following scene worth it. Trust me.

The love interest’s involvement in the lowest point of the story is predictable for me and the family becoming the liability is somewhat easy to see from the start. Yet, the ending redeems everything.

And it's sexy too! Zoe Saldana and Michael Vartan.

Oh, anyway, every story has already been told, and told well already. So, all that matters is doing your best to tell your own version.

This one is sprinkled with good common writing sense. They foreshadowed her dogs’s training, without us guessing what she trained them for. I can swear you will love this scene. They make you think that the bad boss escaped and that she failed, only to catch up in a really big way. Smart.

Did I mention it was "Commando" with brains and a heart. I forgot to mention muscles.

This movie is Luc Besson’s recognizable style (co-written with Robert Mark Kamen) and Zoe Saldana does fit the role well. With Avatar under her belt, she seem in her element here with this high flying, testosterone-filled action piece.

This DVD is well worth the 2 hours. Show it to your girlfriend, she’ll love it too.