MOVIE REVIEW: Columbiana

A LESSON I learnt when viewing Columbiana is that a pretty woman pointing a missile or a gun is an unbelievably highly dangerous assassin.

First of all, you're not sure whether the pretty damsel in front of you is just posing or means business, and the next thing you're losing your breath and dying.

Another lesson is that when a woman says she wants something and you deny her, she'll try all possible means to get it on her own, in her way.

So you better give it to her, otherwise she'll be la femme fatale like Cataleya Restrepo (played by bombshell Zoe Saldana).

Her parents, dad Emilio (Cliff Curtis) and mom Alicia (Cynthia Addoai-Robinson - she's a stunner too) are shot dead in cold blood by drug lord Marco (Jordi Molla).

Marco has ordered the shooting of Cataleya's family so as to get hold of a certain valuable item.

After eliminating her parents he doesn't find the item and decides not to kill Cataleya because he suspects that she knows where it is. He's right about that.

But he has no idea that she will be brave enough to escape and end up in America where she sort of bends her uncle's arm to teach her to be a deadly assassin.

From here onwards you, clever flick fan, can predict the story yourself and you know she's going to hunt down her parents' killers.

The manner in which she does (what with leaving marks on her victims to give a message to her targets) it draws the attention of the FBI.

Funnily enough, the FBI is looking for a male assassin and has no idea that they are actually dealing with a gorgeous professional markswoman.

The direction is solid and action is goose-bumpy. The script is not the best.

The whole shebang smells of its co-writer and producer Luc Besson, director of other gun-totting full-of-revenge dame movies such as The Professional.

It looks like director Olivier Megaton was simply an onlooker here and Besson did all the work.