Colombiana

Ever since I saw the trailer late this past spring, I have been so psyched to see this movie. It looked like an action-thriller meets love story set in a developing country and starring an ethnic female lead character with brains.  It’s so tough to find a movie with a sharp, strong, sexy female lead who can take care of herself apart from any man. Ask for that woman to be non-white and it becomes darn near impossible to find. Given the current climate of respect for developing nations and increasing opportunity for women and minorities, I thought this was going to be a great movie with empowering themes and characters. I was wrong.

The movie starts out with a clichéd meeting between organized criminals that could’ve been lifted from any 1980s Harrison Ford movie. From there, one of the criminals realizes he’s marked for murder. So naturally, he goes straight home to his wife and daughter. While home, he takes several minutes to explain to his nine-year-old daughter what to do in case they don’t make it out. Of course, they might have made it out if he hadn’t taken all that time for idle chit-chat. From there, the little girl sprouts magic little fairy wings that allow her to escape the clutches of about ten grown men chasing her through Bogota. She then gets a US Embassy escort to America where she promptly disappears. A CIA agent goes chasing her, but is never heard from again. She makes her way to Chicago where she moves in with her uncle and grandmother who don’t mind training her to be an assassin. Obviously. 

Colombiana unfortunately is just another stupid action movie where brains are replaced by luck and strength is replaced by the ability to pull a trigger. I expected more from this movie mainly because the PR bragged, “from the makers of La Femme Nikita and The Professional.” I really loved those movies. The Professional was an especially clean story that was well acted and true to the characters. La Femme Nikita and the Hollywood remake Point of No Return were great first steps in bringing stronger, sexy women to screen. Colombiana worked hard to combine those two stories in to one, but failed miserably.  

It seems that there’s a huge disconnect between what it means to be a strong woman and what it means to contradict the male gaze in film. When I first participated in a project called The Woman's Angle in Atlanta, we talked extensively about what it means to bring feminity to film. There's a lot written about how the male gaze has dominated the history of cinema. But is there a female gaze? If so, what does it look like? One thing (pretty much the only thing) that was unanimous in that discussion is that you can't just put the shoe on the other foot. The female gaze isn't just the opposite of the male. With female leads and directors, the focus shifts away from violence, away from gratuitous sex and toward deeper emotional and intellectual truths. 

The fact that the lead character in this movie was female turned out to be almost completely immaterial. The filmmakers still objectified her down to the sexy dance-around-the-room-for-no-apparent-reason scene.  Colombiana makes the mistake of believing that action stories are gender neutral. Zoe’s character objectifies her sex partner who turns out to be a liability where he isn't just a footnote. She mercilessly threatens family members and other innocents. The one time she shows true emotion is in front of an FBI agent to whom she has no personal connection. She’s not real. This character could’ve been played by Jason Statham. Maybe she should’ve been.  That way I wouldn’t have bothered to go see it in the first place.