Saldana has gun, but 'Colombiana' misfires

A body is a terrible thing to waste, especially one as enviable as Zoë Saldana's in the femme-fatale action flick "Colombiana." Lithe, finely sculpted and containing 0 grams of total fat, Saldana makes a convincingly catlike assassin, silently dispatching thugs in her bare feet. As one awestruck baddie says, "She's like mist under a door!" She could probably fit though the mail slot, too.

Too bad she's trapped in such a clumsy, dumb film. Producer-writer Luc Besson, usually a trustworthy name when it comes to cheap, flashy entertainment, may have tread this ground too many times before with movies like "La Femme Nikita," "Léon: The Professional" and "Taken." From the start, the movie feels tired of its own shtick.

Saldana plays Cataleya, a Latina-American killer gearing up for her final takedown: Colombian kingpin Don Luis (Beto Benites). "He murdered my parents in front of me," she sobs, a line that sounds good but isn't true: In a flashback, little Cataleya (Amandla Stenberg) only heard the gunfire from a distance. At any rate, her father was also a criminal, so it's hard to muster much sympathy.

Ditto for Cataleya's uncle, Emilio (Cliff Curtis), who arranges for her to kill strangers for money. That's a bit distasteful, so the script makes sure the victims had it coming. Perhaps, but after watching Cataleya shoot an unarmed woman in a toilet stall, you might start rooting for FBI agent Ross (Lennie James) to throw her skinny butt in a cell.

The director, self-named Olivier Megaton, employs the usual effects (slow-mo fireballs, high-speed fistfights), but there's no poetry in his violence. The film also repeats itself ad nauseam: You have never seen one woman exit and enter so many ventilation shafts. "Colombiana" could have been a cool, end-of-summer treat, but instead it just plops onto the sidewalk.

PLOT A professional assassin hunts down her parents' killer. RATED PG-13 (violence, sexuality, language

CAST Zoe Saldana, Cliff Curtis, Lennie James

LENGTH 1:48

PLAYING AT Area theaters

BOTTOM LINE Saldana makes a convincingly graceful assassin, but this lead-footed clunker can't keep up with her.