Yesterday I did a movie double feature to make up for not having a Netflix'd review this week. I saw Columbiana and Don't Be Afraid of the Dark. They both had their ups and downs, but one of them sent me out of the theater in a rush of confusion, and that's the one I want to write up first. Only one of these movies couldn't make up its mind as to whether or not it wanted to showcase a new, strong female action hero or be an incredibly misogynistic film. Hollywood, you can't have it both ways, you know.
On to the review!
Columbiana is an action film about a woman named Cataleya, who happens to be a bad ass and, if I were a psychologist, probably clinically insane. Now, in case you don't like beautiful women, let me fill you in. This movie is a vehicle for Zoe Saldana. Nerds may remember her as Uhura from the Star Trek reboot, and everyone else may 'recognize' her as the main blue alien female from Avatar. Zoe Saldana is a decent actress and incredibly beautiful. Director Olivier Megaton (Winner of 2011's Greatest Combination of Names That Don't Belong Together) knows this, and tries to take advantage of it.
How does he 'take advantage' of a beautiful lead actress, you ask? By over-emphasizing her curves at the most inappropriate moments, that's how! Then they try to make her more relatable by giving her emotions just like us normal non-fearless-assassins have, but they overdo the shit out of it all. After all is said and done, you end up with conflicting scenes and moments of intense action interspersed with confusing and disturbing bouts of crying, screaming, stubbornness and general WTF'ery.
On top of all that, Mr. Megaton couldn't leave well enough alone and made sure that our Cataleya only wore the tightest, most form-fitting outfits she could get her hands on. This is appropriate for approximately 30% of the missions she goes on throughout the film. What you end up with is a movie that has her putting on a form-fitting outfit and kicking ass while the camera constantly finds excuses to linger on her ass and braless chest, then shows her creepily breaking into her 'boyfriend's' house for some loving and leaving. Then it's off to another mission followed by some crying and freaking out. Then another mission before random sexy dancing, etc. etc. It's all very confusing.
Plot wise, they do a decent job of trying to establish WHY she's so fucked in the head. A young Cataleya watches her drug-lord's second in command father and presumably mostly innocent mother get killed because they wanted out of the Columbian drug trade. She goes to the embassy and gets herself a U.S. citizenship, finds her Uncle in Chicago and demands to be a trained killer. There's a decent chase scene that made me want to play the 'favela' stage in Modern Warfare 2, but otherwise the 'young Cataleya' scenes go on for about ten minutes too long.
I honestly can't say anything about the rest of the cast because they fulfilled their contracts, nothing more and nothing less. The drug lord is ineffective and kind of makes you wonder how the hell he got so powerful in the first place. They never explain why he's protected by the CIA (oh yeah, apparently the CIA moves Columbian drug lords to New Orleans and lets them keep selling shit to kids), the FBI agent is damn ineffective, and everyone else is just there. The only real cool cat in the film is the Uncle Emilio, who takes Cataleya in and lets this precocious young child become a crazed, revenge-fueled murderess. Actor Cliff Curtis strikes the right pose between being an accomplished thug himself and still being a family man.
All in all, Columbiana is a muddled mess with a barely coherent plot, poor camera angles during the fight scenes, boilerplate action, unimpressive dialog and random bouts of crying. Some people are going to watch this film and be impressed by how badass Zoe Saldana gets to be, and others are going to watch this film and wonder if the director hates women and assumes they're always on their period. Feel free to make your own decisions, but I recommend this as a Redbox rental or a late-night HBO flick. The theater experience didn't add too much to it, and there's nothing so amazing that I'd encourage you to watch it on the big screen. All in all, I doubt this is going to become anything huge on the scale of the Bourne films, but it's message is so confusing that it accidentally makes it better than your average non-martial-arts action flick.
Addendum: Thanks to the trailers, I just learned that Straw Dogs is getting a remake. I've never seen the Dustin Hoffman original, but now I think I need to seek it out. After viewing the trailer for the new one and comparing it to the original, I encourage anyone who is interested in the remake to keep their expectations low.
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