Colombiana

Year 14, Day 123 - 5/3/22 - Movie #4,126

BEFORE:  Cliff Curtis carries over from "Reminiscence". Four days until my Mother's Day programming kicks in - and I've got a lot of shifts coming up at the movie theater, 10 days in May, PLUS I'm taking three days off for a trip to Atlantic City, hopefully.  I'll try to keep up with the movie-watching schedule as best as I can, because if I fall behind I'll be late for Father's Day in June.  BUT if I fall behind a couple days in May, then I may get a World War II film to land on Memorial Day - so maybe it's a win either way?  

THE PLOT: A young girl in Bogota witnesses her parents' murder and grows up to be a stone-cold assassin. 

AFTER: I swear this wasn't planned, it's just a coincidence, but this is the FOURTH film in a row with (essentially) the same plot.  I programmed by actor linking alone, but still, these four films ended up adjacent, so either this is a VERY common theme in movies, or my process somehow works as some kind of sorting hat for action-revenge films.  

This time it's Zoe Saldana as the capable action star, and it's her parents that got killed, sending her on a lifetime quest for vengeance, from Colombia to Chicago to train with her uncle as an assassin, and (eventually) work her way up the chain of a criminal empire to (eventually) kill the man who had her parents killed. 

The problems start when Fabio Restrepo tries to retire from his criminal life in Bogota, and apparently that's not something that anybody should do, because it's an obvious death sentence, he probably just knows too much about the organization, like where all the bodies are buried.  So he can't possibly walk away, but before he gets killed, he gives his young daughter Cataleya a small drive with information on it, and calls it her "passport".  Also, he gives her the address of her uncle in Chicago - she trades the drive to the U.S. government for passage to America, and instead of being put in foster care, she runs away and finds her uncle, who trains her as an assassin, I guess right after she finishes high school?  

Whenever she kills a member of the Sandoval gang, she leaves behind an orchid, the flower that she's named after - and eventually Sandoval and his enforcer Marco end up in the U.S., to try to track down the assassin killing all their men.  At the same time, the FBI has made the connection between twenty murders committed by the same person, and they start closing in on her, too. All it takes is her casual boyfriend showing her picture to his friend, who for some reason does a background check on his friend's mysterious girlfriend, and then somehow this gives the FBI her approximate location?  I'm not sure that logically follows, but it's what we're given to work with tonight. 

So our hero has to make a connection with an FBI agent, by threatening his family (?) and turning him over to her side.  Together they approach the CIA agent protecting Sandoval and learn his secret location in the U.S.  I kind of wish there'd been a better way for her to accomplish her goals, was threatening federal agents really the best plan, in the end?  

This script was originally written by Luc Besson as a sequel to "Leon: The Professional", but I guess maybe Natalie Portman wasn't available to reprise her role, so they re-wrote it for a new character and set her origin story in Colombia?  Or something like that. And now there's been talk, on and off, over the last few years about a possible sequel to "Colombiana", but no definite word has been announced yet. 

Also starring Zoe Saldana (last heard in "Vivo"), Jordi Molla (last seen in "The Man Who KIlled Don Quixote"), Lennie James (last seen in "The Next Three Days"), Amandla Stenberg (last seen in "The Hate U Give"), Michael Vartan (last seen in "Never Been Kissed"), Beto Benites, Jesse Borrego, Cynthia Addai-Robinson (last seen in "The Accountant"), Angel Garnica, Ofelia Medina, Callum Blue (last seen in "Transcendence"), Sam Douglas, Graham McTavish (last seen in "Middle Men"), Charles Maquignon, Affif Ben Badra, Billy Slaughter (last seen in "Geostorm"), Nikea Gamby-Turner, John McConnell (last seen in "Instant Family"), Max Martini (last seen in "16 Hours"), Julien Muller, Doug Rao.

RATING: 5 out of 10 toothbrush nunchucks