Colombiana - DVD Review

Starring Zoe Saldana, Jordi Malla, Lennie James, Cliff Curtis, Amandla Stenberg and Michael Vartan.
Directed by Olivier Megaton.

★★

This dark revenge flick gets as stark and bleak as a PG-13 movie can get. We first meet our heroine Cataleya as a little girl (The Hunger Games' Amandla Stenberg) in Colombia. She sees her parents murdered in front of her. She escapes and makes her way to the US, where she finds her uncle (Cliff Curtis), first introduced to us beating a tied-up man to a pulp. Oh, but he loves his niece!

Flash-forward a few years. Now Cataleya's old enough to be played by Zoe Saldana, and we see her enact her elaborate plan. She goes after druglord scumbags one by one, all leading up to the Big Boss.

Is this based on a video game? It could be. One of those games where the butt-kicking heroine is always is skin-tight clothes, and she's adept at all sorts of firearms. One where very few if any people will alive by the end credits, and whatever victory won will feel hollow.