Taglines: Revenge is beautiful.
Cataleya, 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.
Colombiana is an American action film, co-written and produced by Luc Besson and directed by Olivier Megaton. The film stars Zoe Saldana in the lead role[4] with supporting roles performed by Michael Vartan, Cliff Curtis, Lennie James, Callum Blue, and Jordi Mollà.
In 1992, Bogota, Colombia, Fabio Restrepo (Jesse Borrego), has key information about drug lord Don Luis Sandoval (Beto Benites). However, Don Luis fears that Fabio will be pulling a hit on them, so he sends his henchman Marco (Jordi Mollà) to kill him. Fabio gives his nine-year-old daughter Cataleya (Amandla Stenberg) the information Don Luis wants and tells her it’s her “passport”; he also gives her the address of her Uncle Emilio (Cliff Curtis), a criminal in Chicago, who will take care of her if she finds herself alone.
The last thing he gives her is something that will keep her safe: his mom’s necklace, the cataleya orchid. Fabio tells her to sit at the kitchen table and not move no matter what. After saying their goodbyes, Fabio and his wife Alicia (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) leave to battle Marco and his men but both of them are gunned down as Cataleya listens from the kitchen. Marco tries to manipulate her into giving the information. When he asks what she wants, she stabs him in the hand with a kitchen knife, saying “To kill Don Luis”, and escapes. She safely makes it to the U.S. Embassy and gives the Embassy the information in exchange for a passport and passage to the United States. She escapes to the airport, where she makes it to the US and takes a bus to Chicago. Once she finds Emilio, Cataleya asks him to train her as an assassin.
Fifteen years later, a 24-year-old Cataleya (Zoe Saldana) has become an accomplished assassin. Her uncle serves as her broker, providing her with contracts. She is assigned to kill the notorious gangster Genarro Rizzo (Affif Ben Badra), who is currently in police custody. Implementing an elaborate plan, she gets herself arrested while dressed in a disguise. She manages to escape from her cell with tools she hid in her disguise, travel through the ventilation system, successfully kill Rizzo, and return to her cell. The next morning she is released.
As with her previous murders, she leaves her signature, the Cattleya flower, which is a message to her ultimate target, Don Luis. After learning about this Colombian Orchid, FBI Special Agent James Ross (Lennie James) can now link this case to more than twenty other cases. As a last resort the FBI decides to inform the public about Cataleya’s calling card. Don Luis, who is currently in a witness protection program overseen by CIA Agent Steve Richard (Callum Blue), concludes correctly that Fabio’s daughter is in the U.S. and orders Marco (whose hand still hurts from 15 years ago) and some operatives to find her.[5][6]
Emilio is devastated when he learns Cataleya has a signature since she has thereby put her relatives in grave danger. Cataleya’s newest target is William “Willy” Woogard (Sam Douglas), a millionaire who fled to the Caribbean with $50 million from his Ponzi scheme. She sneaks into his house and shoots him, and he falls inside his shark tank, where the sharks maul him to death.
Cataleya later visits her lover, Danny Delaney (Michael Vartan), and spends the night with him. Danny snaps a picture of her while she sleeps. That morning she meets with her uncle, Emilio, who furiously tells her that eight people were slaughtered in Miami, one of them being his friend, stating “they’re getting too close”. Emilio then retires his niece from her work.
Danny shows her picture to his friend Ryan, but when Danny leaves to stop his car from being ticketed, Ryan forwards it to his sister-in-law, a police clerk, to find out who she is. Now in the police computers, the photo is recognized by the body/morph recognition software as that of the woman who was in the same prison as Genarro Rizzo the night he was killed. Detective Ross is notified, and the FBI quickly trace her location. Supported by a SWAT team they leave for her apartment.
After Cataleya gives her goodbyes to her family she goes home, but gets a call from Danny, who confesses that he took a picture of her. Upon seeing the SWAT team enter the apartment, she manages to escape through the garage and goes to Emilio’s home, only to discover that Mama, Pepe (Angel Garnica), and Emilio have been tortured and killed by Don Luis’s men, leaving her devastated.
Cataleya ambushes FBI detective Ross in his home in order to find out where Don Luis is. She threatens to kill Ross’s family members one by one if he doesn’t try harder to help her. Fearing for the safety of his family, Ross meets with Steve Richard, who is unhelpful at first, but after Cataleya fires a warning shot through his “bulletproof” office window, Richard gives up Don Luis’s current location. Cataleya then goes to a land surveyor Stanley Smith and threatens him for the floor plans of Don Luis’ mansion.
Cataleya assaults Don Luis’s premises with heavy weaponry and wipes out all the guards, then confronts Marco in a bathroom and, after a violent hand-to-hand battle, stabs him in the neck with a gun slide action. Don Luis escapes by driving off in a van, but is stopped by a garbage truck. Cataleya calls him on Marco’s cell phone, but Don Luis laughs and says that he will kill her and she will never find him because he is never where Cataleya wants him to be. Strangely, Cataleya responds that he is exactly where she wants him to be. Unknowingly, Pepe’s two attack dogs are right behind Luis’ seat and they violently maul Luis to death after hearing Cataleya say “Eat.” through the phone.
Colombiana
Directed by: Olivier Megaton
Starring: Zoe Saldana, Michael Vartan, Cliff Curtis, Lennie James, Callum Blue, Jordi Mollà, Amandla Stenberg, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Beto Benites, Ofelia Medina
Screenplay by: Luc Besson, Robert Mark Kamen
Production Design by: Patrick Durand
Cinematography by: Romain Lacourbas
Film Editing by: Camille Delamarre
Costume Design by: Olivier Bériot
Set Decoration by: Philippe Cord’homme, Ryan Martin Dwyer
Art Direction by: Gilles Boillot, Franckie Diago, Carlos Lagunas, Pascal Leguellec, Fanny Stauff
Music by: Nathaniel Méchaly, Craig Walker
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for violence, disturbing images, intense sequences of action, sexuality and brief strong language.
Studio: Sony Pictures
Release Date: August 31, 2011
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