Cataleya is a young woman who has grown up to be an assassin after witnessing the murder of her parents as a child. Turning herself into a professional killer and working for her uncle, she remains focused on her ultimate goal: to hunt down and get revenge on the mobster responsible for her parents' deaths. - skip ad -   Genres: Action/Adventure, Art/Foreign, Drama and Thriller Running Time: 1 hr. 45 min. Release Date: August 26th, 2011 (wide) MPAA Rating: PG-13 for violence, disturbing images, intense sequences of action, sexuality, and brief strong language. Distributor: Sony Pictures Releasing Cast And Credits Starring: Zoe Saldana, Jordi Molla, Lennie James, Michael Vartan, Cliff Curtis Directed by: Oliver Megaton Produced by: Luc Besson, Ariel Zeitoun (II)

Refusing to believe what the evidence is telling him, the F.B.I. agent chasing the implacable killer in “Colombiana” snarls: “We’re not looking for a woman. It’s not possible.”

Apparently he hasn’t been watching enough Luc Besson movies. The director of this potboiler revenge fantasy may be Olivier Megaton (a great action-director name, even if it is pronounced may-gah-Tone). But the guiding spirit is clearly that of Mr. Besson, a writer and producer of the film, who can claim to have created and continually perfected the lethal-woman-in-her-underwear genre to which “Colombiana” belongs.



Mr. Besson’s previous avenging waifs have included Anne Parillaud (in the foundational “Femme Nikita”), a very young Natalie Portman (“The Professional”) and an orange-haired Milla Jovovich (“The Fifth Element”). His latest muse is Zoe Saldana, the blue-skinned heroine of “Avatar,” who proves to be equally adept at the essential skill of wielding large guns while wearing skimpy clothing. (Well, maybe not as adept as Ms. Jovovich, who seems to have been genetically engineered for this kind of thing.)

What’s not required is the creation of an actual character; the best an actress can hope for is to look good and, if the director and screenwriter cooperate, maintain her dignity and sense of humor. Ms. Saldana, playing an almost supernaturally skilled hit woman and parkour enthusiast whose larger mission is to avenge the murder of her Colombian drug-dealing parents, has to work hard in that regard.

That’s because “Colombiana” isn’t content to be a comic-book joyride (though it is that); it has pretensions to a more turgid class of revenge melodrama, along the lines of Tony Scott’s “Man on Fire.” It also has pretensions, period: Mr. Megaton sprinkles in homages to Francis Ford Coppola (Ms. Saldana’s rising out of the water like Martin Sheen in “Apocalypse Now”) and Brian De Palma (the climactic sequence at a drug lord’s lair is redolent of “Scarface”). The overall effect is distancing; there are some early comic moments that have you laughing along with the movie, but eventually the clashing tones and preposterousness just have you laughing.

Ms. Saldana has one other thing to overcome: the presence of a wide-eyed 13-year-old actress named Amandla Stenberg, who plays the protagonist, Cataleya Restrepo, at the time her parents are gunned down, in the first 10 minutes of the movie. Her portrayal of the future deadly-but-sensitive killer is such a perfect combination of trembling emotion, action chops and deadpan humor that Ms. Saldana, no matter how sexily professional her work is, spends the rest of the movie failing to live up to it.