Don’t waste your time seeing this film. It is straight to DVD quality. I kept waiting for Dolph Lungren to jump out. If are curious, wait for redbox.
Someone does deserve an award for the Columbiana trailer. The trailer gets your blood moving.
And I saw this film under a false assumption. I thought Luc Besson directed it. He does not, he has a co-writer credit on the screenplay. And I’m pretty sure this might be the worst film he’s been associated with, hold on let me research it a bit. No, that would be Hitman. But still, it’s not good.
The story is familiar ground for the man, a young girl’s family is killed in front of her (difficult to generate sympathy as her father was a killer for hire). She finds relatives (who are in the murder business in the American Midwest) and she begins to train for revenge.
There is potential in the film, Zoe Salanda is a talented actress and she deserves to be a headliner, and there’s a very solid scene where she gains access to a police station to kill a prisoner by fabricating a very funny DUI. Cliff Curtis, who plays her uncle, has a pretty good scene where he convinces Zoe that she needs to go to school if she wants to kill anyone. But those are the only parts worth anyone’s time, and they amount to 12 minutes of the movie.
You hear the name Luc Besson, and you’re thinking of The Professional and Taken and you’re all pumped, and nothing. The action is all boring and any innovation in the plot is foreshadowed to death and there are no suprises. And while Zoe is gifted and very hot; those things a movie do not make.
Like I said, don’t waste your time.