Both films play against type. “Colombiana,” despite its female lead, wants to appeal to the (mostly male) “action movie” aficionados, where the more violence and explosions and chase scenes, the better. The twist here is that rather than a male hero who’s basically patriotic, we have a female heroine (does anybody still use that word in this sense any more?) who’s really just out for revenge. Oh, and she uses a member of the opposite gender as a plaything on call, but without real commitment: the classic macho model.
“Our Idiot Brother” is all about relationships, which normally would fall under the “chick flick” genre. You know the format: all the female characters would be intelligent, sensitive, happy, successful, and only slightly neurotic, but making progress emotionally, while all the male characters would be either absent, incomplete, lacking in social graces, nerds, jerks, self-absorbed nincompoops, or some combination of these unenviable attributes.
But in “Our Idiot Brother,” Paul Rudd plays Ned, a gentle, lovable, happy man who would be considered somewhat of a loser on most objective evaluations: He lost his job selling produce from an organic farm because he actually sold a package of pot to a uniformed cop (just trying to be helpful, you know). When he gets out of jail, several months later, he thought his girlfriend would be waiting for him back on the farm, but wrong. The new boyfriend has already taken his place. But gentle Ned’s parole officer says he must have a permanent address, and if it’s with a family member, that family member must vouch for his residency there, so our wannabe-hippie takes turns living with his three sisters. But it seems his lack of guile creates problems everywhere he goes. The married sister is so preoccupied with raising the babies that she’s refusing to notice that her husband is having an affair, but this doesn’t escape Ned’s attention, and he can’t help but mention it – just being honest, you know. Another sister asks him to be part of an elaborate deception at work, and part of him wants to be agreeable, and he needs the job, but he just can’t make himself live a lie, and so blows her cover, so she won’t have to be dishonest, either. And then the other sister – well, you get the idea. They love him for who he is, but he drives them crazy for being so childlike in an adult’s body – Forrest Gump without the fame and commercial success. After a series of mishaps and missteps, they finally understand that anyone who loves dogs, children and three very different sisters who’ve been mean to him can’t be all bad.
In “Colombiana,” the viewer struggles with watching Cataleya, a sexy Zoe Saldana, being all bad. OK, she had a valid excuse – as a Colombian child, her parents were killed in front of her, and she barely escapes. When she finally finds her way to an uncle in America, her young, impressionable mind is already set on revenge. She’s just going to prepare herself mentally and physically for the challenge. With her expert uncle’s guidance, she turns into a cold-blooded contract killer. (This raises “dysfunctional family” to a whole new level.) Watch our sleek beauty slither through air vents and narrowly escape through ceiling crawl spaces, then ruthlessly track down all those in the drug cartel that destroyed her family. For kingpins she savors a special demise – they’re dispatched by killer sharks or killer dogs. She even leaves a “signature” for the FBI to find, so the publicity will draw the security-conscious drug lords out into the open. There’s something about the combination of lethal beauty and graceful violence that compels the viewer to root for her, despite her obvious intimacy issues. Or maybe because of them.
Oddly enough, both of these disparate characters seek an elusive personal happiness that they are unlikely to find, but they are peculiarly self-fulfilled nonetheless.
Ronald P. Salfen is co-pastor, of United Presbyterian Church, Greenville, Texas.
