Colombiana

Writer/producer Luc Besson returns to familiar super-assassin territory with Colombiana, and it may be time he left the genre well alone. After witnessing the murder of her family at the hands of a vicious drug lord, Cataleya, a pint-sized schoolgirl with a knack for parkour, flees her home of Bogotá for Chicago, where her gangster uncle (Cliff Curtis) takes her under his wing and trains her in the art of killing. Cataleya emerges fifteen years later in the lithe shape of Zoe Saldana, hell-bent on avenging the deaths of her parents.

Any and all hired gun movie clichés are wheeled out, which would be fine if Colombiana was in any way fun, dynamic or witty. Saldana cuts an insipid hero, given very little to do aside from look a bit cross and run around in tiny outfits while being ogled by director Olivier Megaton’s pervy gaze. Cataleya’s disregard for innocents, frequent stupidity and the fact her dad was a button-man for the cartel when clipped make it difficult for an audience to engage; generic South American charisma-vacuum baddies without a decent, even threatening, line between them also add to the tedium. There is one tense, ferocious scrap towards the denouement, but the set-pieces are otherwise as bland as the screenplay. [Chris Fyvie]