Colombiana

Cecil says: It's not often I go to films on my own, but Bea and I are apart for a few weeks. So I watched this one with nine teenagers in a 250-seater movie theater in downtown Athens, Tennessee.

The film opens with a helicopter-eye view of somewhere third-world-looking. It's interspersed with lots of guns, grenades, fighting, so we're probably supposed to wonder if it's Beirut or Damascus (though, hey, maybe not, if we think about the name of the film we came to see...).

That's right: it's somewhere in Colombia, probabaly Medellin, in 1992. There's this awful scene next with two druglords having meaningful man-to-man brotherly hugs before they go off and try to kill each other. And then we're left to focus on the daughter.

She's about 9 when her Dad is killed and the third scene is actually a rather good chase through the shanty town (not often you get a chase so early in a film), as she dramatically gets away from the drug gang members.

We quickly switch to 15 years later and this cute, but feisty 9 year old has become a lethal killer herself, bent on revenge for the killing of her parents.

To be honest, the best parts of the film are the opening scenes. I never saw Angelina Jolie in Catwoman, but somehow I felt throughout that this was a kind of carbon copy. Zoe Saldana does a pretty good job, but I reckon her stunt double had more fun in this movie.

And the police side of it was somewhere between Columbo and Without a Trace. Just got me thinking: why do we always emotionally side with the FBI over the CIA in these stories? And just how quickly CAN these sort of services track you down in the bathroom of X apartment block, using all their modern technology?

You also had suspend disbelief most of the way through the final scenes. Where did Cataleya get the money for all this very sophisticated armoury? How did she manage to case her joints so thoroughly before going on the killing spree?

That said, it runs along smoothely, and takes you with the flow. I haven't really been a great Luc Besson fan since his very early stuff in the 1980s, but this was not bad. Some might find the ending a bit too tidy, but I kind of liked it - and great Johnny Cash song to bring on the credits at the end...

Such a shame more people don't use the cinema in these small towns, They're lucky to have a big screen venue still there. Hey, two of the teenage couples spent the evening snogging on the back row, but in a way, that's great. Isn't that what teenagers are SUPPOSED to do (I can remember going to see Abba The Movie with one girlfriend and I don't think we saw more than five minutes of the film). Where are the rest of the Athens community? Come on, guys, it cost just $10 (that's £6 if you're a Brit) and you just can't beat the big screen for atmosphere, regardless of who you're with...Shame Bea wasn't there, though.

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