At Home: Colombiana

I want to be a killer. Can you help me?

There was talk of Luc Besson’s latest project Colombiana being a Leon 2: Mathilda – Assassin for Hire. The reality is far more disappointing with a forgettable ho-hum actioner taking the place of what could have been a fun film.

Zoe Saldana is Cataleya, daughter of a South American gangster who along with his wife is killed in a scene that recalls Besson’s Leon (something that happens a lot in this film). Young and impressionable, the experience has changed her and after making her way to America she decides she wants to be a “killer”. For some reason her Uncle Emilio (Cliff Curtis) agrees to this and she turns into Saldana, a contract killer by day who searches for her father’s killer, hoping to drag him out of his little hidey-hole by leaving a message (a drawing of the Cataleya flower) on her victims.

Olivier Megaton’s previous directorial work indicated that he was more of an action director than one who cared about plot, character or fresh ideas. Besson’s and fellow scribe Robert Mark Kamen’s script is about as generic as it gets (people die + revenge = more people dying) and his direction never diverts attention from its flatness, instead, opting to peruse Saldana’s lithe body as she silkily goes about and, y’know, kills people.

There’s the padding of her relationship with Michael Vartan’s Danny implying our heroine is significantly damaged emotionally, unable to open up to others as she recklessly endangers the lives of her loved ones by playing with fire (and she gets burned, figuratively speaking). She’s your typical beautiful, deadly but fragile assassin who floats around killing stereotypes and dressing in body hugging clothes.

There’s little weight to the characters and their relationships (with Cliff Curtis coming close to adding a little bit of interest/conflict) and the action is rather sub-par; explosive to be sure, but filled with such inane me-too style sequences (another parkour chase?) and some incoherent framing and editing with so many cuts that it’s hard to decipher what good director and editor thought they were doing, (a fight scene with Jordi Mollà’s gangster is physical but my word is the camera tight on the action).

In the end Colombiana is the sort of passable, harmless film that’s churned out every year. It’s dim enough that it entertains with a few neat assassinations (toothbrush!) and Saldana’s pleasingly let loose with an assault rifle in the final act, but it sacrifices too much clarity for visceral fight sequences and the narrative is your standard revenge followed by blah blah more revenge, blah blah the end. Uninspiring stuff and Saldana deserves more than this pilfering of better films.

5/10

Top five motion captured performances

With Rise of the Planet of the Apes opening in UK cinemas this week, I thought I’d take a look at five of the best motion-captured performances that have come our way since the technology’s inception. Feel free to agree or disagree in the comments below.

5. Dr Manhattan

He’s blue, he glows and he’s naked. He also happens to be the most powerful being in the universe. A combination of motion capture and CG head replacement (the body belonging to fitness model and actor Greg Plitt), Billy Crudup’s detached performance was enhanced by the visual effects and not sullied by it.

4. Gollum

Perhaps the first real evidence that motion capture could be executed and executed well. The final effect incorporated the performance of Serkis with animators  inserting/adjusting footage where necessary. It’s a remarkable feat in visual effects that they created a character that emoted and had a personality of its own.

3. King Kong

A massive leap in motion capture from visual effects production house Weta and Peter Jackson, perhaps even more impressive than their attempts with Gollum. After the 1933 stop motion effects and 1975’s animatronics + man-in-a-suit, Kong found a look that suited him for a modern audience. Like Gollum, Serkis was the actor powering the CG creation, giving a performance full of rage but also solemn in other moments. Serkis’ and Weta’s work sold audiences on the romance between Kong and Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts).

2. Davy Jones

Quite possibly my favourite performance on the list (and they are all very, very good in that respect) but Bill Nighy’s captain of the dammed nudges it by being despicably evil and having a scott-ush accent. So good you could have mistaken it for makeup, Davy Jones was as close to photorealism a squid-faced, crustacean-pawed character could be.

1. Neytiri

A fantastic showcase for what motion capture can do when it’s utilised well, believably turning a 5ft 7in Zoe Zaldana into a 9ft + tall blue humanoid with a tail. An emotional and physical performance, Saldana’s Neytiri didn’t receive any love from award organisations but it opened doors, if not fully then partially, for the acceptance of a motion-captured performance in the minds of audiences around the world.

Review: Avatar extended edtion – with added fat

Avatar, the biggest box office hit of the century so far, the biggest hit of all time. For better or worse it has evolved the landscape of modern films, taken it to the next level in terms of what we think cinema is capable of. Whatever you may think of Avatar, the effect it’s had is remarkable and undeniable. Considering this is the third edition that’s been released since its theatrical debut last year, is this the version you’ll want to own?