At the end of the trailer for Colombiana (directed by the delightfully named Olivier Megaton), title cards begin to spell out the movie’s tagline while a revenge-seeking Zoe Saldana fires guns and seduces Michael Vartan. “Vengeance … Is …. ” Hers? Swift? Brutal? No, says the final title card: “Beautiful.” And it’s followed by a shot of Saldana suggestively sucking on a lollipop — oh, so it’s going to be that kind of movie. As the New York Times recently noted, this is the year of the gun-toting, violent screen woman, but is that kind of equal time a strong step forward or simply fetishistic? When Jason Statham’s trailers declare, “Revenge … Is …. Hunky,” maybe we’ll know for sure.
