Avatar and MCU star Zoe Saldana
takes the lead in a divisive action thriller from 2011, which is due to land on Netflix
in the new year. Not only does the movie find the Guardians of the Galaxy actor at the forefront, it was co-written and produced by controversial Taken and The Fifth Element filmmaker Luc Besson, and helmed by Transporter 3 and Taken 2 director Olivier Megaton. So, it has quite the action movie pedigree, if not the critical response to back it up.
Co-written and produced by Luc Besson and directed by Olivier Megaton, the action outing is titled Colombiana
and stars Zoe Saldaña alongside the likes of Michael Vartan, Cliff Curtis, Lennie James, Callum Blue, and Jordi Mollà. Colombiana is all set to hit Netflix in the new year on January 1, and could make the perfect post-New Year’s Eve viewing. You can check out the official synopsis below.
“In 1992 Bogota, a little girl watches crime lord Don Luis and his henchman Marco murder her parents. Fifteen years later, the now-grown Cataleya, who is named for a Colombian orchid, works as a contract killer for her Chicago-based uncle. Leaving a lipstick drawing of her namesake on every victim, Cataleya carries out her assignments with efficiency and dreams of avenging her family.”
‘Colombiana’ Began Life as a Sequel to Beloved Action Movie ‘Léon: The Professional’
Colombiana proved to be divisive. The action thriller is just another example of the divide between critics and audiences that often occurs with these kinds of projects, achieving just 28% with the former while standing at a solid 67% courtesy of the latter. The movie, however, did receive universal praise for both Zoe Saldaña’s performance and the action sequences, with the critics’ consensus reading, “Zoe Saldana has the chops but she’s taken out by erratic and sloppy filmmaking.”
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Interestingly, Colombiana is something of an unofficial sequel to one of Luc Besson’s best (and most controversial) action movies: Léon: The Professional. Released back in 1994, Léon: The Professional was met with positive reviews from critics and stands at a “certified fresh” rating of 75% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, with audiences even more enamored with this oddly affecting tale of a hitman and his (too) young protégé and garnering the movie a hugely impressive 95%.
A Léon: The Professional sequel was once on the cards, with director Luc Besson writing a script titled Mathilda about a much older version of the character played by Natalie Portman, who has now become a “cleaner” much like Jean Reno’s Léon before her. However, the official follow-up never happened, with Besson instead reworking the script into the 2011 action thriller Colombiana starring Zoe Saldaña as a killer seeking vengeance.
Having starred in some of the biggest franchises of all time, Zoe Saldaña won critical acclaim (and Oscar buzz) for her performance in this year’s Emilia Pérez. She will soon return to James Cameron’s billion-dollar blockbuster series, Avatar, reprising the role of the Na’vi Neytiri in Avatar: Fire and Ash, which is due to land in theaters on December 19, 2025.
- Release Date
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July 27, 2011
- Runtime
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105minutes
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