I didn’t realize the film was being screened for press already. I haven’t received any invites. Maybe Sergio has, since he’s special, and I’m not.

Jordan Mintzer at The Hollywood Reporter is even more special than either of us, because they are the first to post a review of the film. I haven’t seen any others elsewhere. Even movie review aggregator site, Rotten Tomatoes, lists zero reviews at the moment, as does MRQE – the Movie Review Query Engine.

Though I suspect others will start popping up sooner than later.

The review IDs the writer’s location as Paris, so The Hollywood Reporter must have had Mr Mintzer attend one of the early screenings in France, since the film actually opens in that country tomorrow, the 27th.

So what does The Hollywood Reporter have to say about Colombiana?

This is how it starts:

Jean-Luc Godard’s famous remark that all you need to make a movie is “a girl and a gun” doesn’t quite hold water for Luc Besson. In his world, you need one girl wearing as little as possible, and at least fifty guns, preferably firing at the same time. Such is the formula applied to Colombiana, the latest EuropaCorp effort produced and co-scripted by Besson, and directed by in-house auteur Olivier Megaton, whose mise-en-scène is often as subtle as his last name sounds. Still, there are guilty pleasures to be had in this frenzied B starring Zoe Saldana (Avatar, Star Trek), who gives an acrobatic performance that makes the overcooked material watchable, if not entirely enjoyable.

And towards the middle we find this:

Conceived as a sort of follow up to Besson’s La Femme Nikita, the scenario (co-written by regular Robert Mark Kamen, creator of The Karate Kid) nonetheless lacks whatever subtlety could have been found in the much artier 1990 thriller, which combined killer looks and pyrotechnics in fascinating ways. Here, the point is to strip Ms. Saldana down to the bare minimum and then to throw her (sometimes literally) from one action scene to another. This doesn’t mean that Colombiana comes without its own charms, and two well-handled escape sequences prove that the actress can bring both physical rigor and a certain level of class to the stunts. Other moments merely showcase how many times Megaton must have watched the Jason Bourne series, from which he filches both an in-your-face bathroom brawl and a scene where Cataleya calls someone in an office…from an office in the opposite building.

So what have we got? Zoe Saldana running around with little clothing, showing a lot of skin, carrying lots of big guns, lots and lots of action, with all the subtlety of a megaton hammer (sorry, couldn’t resist) to the head, Bourne references, and, did I forget Zoe Saldana stripped down to the “bare minimum?”

I can only wonder who the target audience for this film is. Really, I have no clue!

I’ll be checking my email for that press screening invite soon.

Colombiana opens in the USA on August 26th.