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Why hitwomen must be fitwomen

This article is more than 10 years old
If a female contract killer isn't prepared to smuggle herself into the villain's lair disguised as a scantily clad hooker, the movie world isn't interested
Still from Colombiana
In the line of sight … Zoe Saldana in Colombiana
In the line of sight … Zoe Saldana in Colombiana
Thu 1 Sep 2011 17.30 EDT

Colombiana is the sort of film in which a caring dad yells "Hurry! Men are coming to kill us!" before dallying for 10 minutes to tell his daughter he named her after an orchid. Nine-year-old Cataleya gives her parents' murderers the slip via the now-obligatory parkour tour of the favela, and grows into a sexy contract killer whose boyfriend doesn't know what business she's in. Meanwhile, on the sly, she's wreaking revenge on the sort of mobster whose idea of interior decor is a glass floor over a shark tank.

It's a film that, officially, is neither remake nor sequel – and yet, in a way (and not just because every beat of it is familiar as old socks) it's both. The director may be Olivier Megaton, but the co-writer and producer is Luc Besson, and he's relating the grown-up adventures of the little girl played by 12-year-old Natalie Portman in Léon. Besson planned a sequel called Mathilda (not to be confused with Roald Dahl's Matilda) but it fell by the wayside owing to rights issues. Now Mathilda has undergone a makeover and re-emerges as Cataleya, played by Zoe Saldana.

Léon was already a sequel of sorts, developing the intriguing minor character played by Jean Réno in an even earlier Besson film, Nikita – another story about an assassin whose boyfriend doesn't have a clue what business she's in, and whose character arc travels along a similar trajectory as Cataleya's. Mind you, there's a shortage of character arcs for hitpeople; it's either carry on killing or develop a conscience, usually after meeting a child or a blind person.

Hitmen are such a fixture of modern movies that I'm waiting for contract killing to be touted in schools as a viable career option, but it's the hitwoman films, adding a hint of ovarian spice to the action formula, that attract most of the attention. Isn't that always the way? Jason Statham and company can juggle with A-K 47s and no one blinks, but give a girl a teeny-tiny handgun and the media erupt into debates about whether this is female empowerment, or entertainment for guys who like watching Chicks Who Love Guns videos.

The latest wrinkle is to lower the age so the hitwoman is more of a hitgirl, as in Kick-Ass and Hanna. Given we're told criminals are getting younger, that seems fair enough. At this rate, we'll soon be having films about hitbabies packing Glocks in their nappies, which I reckon is no more unfeasible than Saldana or Angelina Jolie (in Mr & Mrs Smith) or Mélanie Laurent (in Requiem Pour une Tueuse) playing stone-cold killers, even though their arms are so skinny they look as if they'd snap if they tried to squeeze the trigger on a Sig Sauer P229. It's for this reason I'm looking forward to Steven Soderbergh's Haywire, starring a real-life muay thai expert (Gina Carano) who actually looks chunky enough to be capable of giving the likes of Statham a proper going-over.

But then, let's face it, hitwomen need to be hotwomen, or even fitwomen in the latterday sense of the word "fit"; we'll never be treated to the character arcs of Rosa Klebb or Irma Bunt, which is a shame. If a female contract killer isn't prepared to go braless in skinny vests and micro-minis and Louboutins, or smuggle herself into the villain's lair disguised as a scantily clad hooker, the movie world isn't interested.

So whither the hitwoman? Is she stuck in a Colombiana/Nikita character arc forever? Maybe she should look east to the sort of exploitation that can be enjoyed by both sexes. I'm thinking of Japan's Lady Snowblood, one of Tarantino's inspirations for Kill Bill, which features levels of gushing blood that wouldn't look out of place in, say, Sam Peckinpah's Salad Days. Or Hong Kong's Naked Killer films, in which the assassins aren't technically naked, of course, but wear sexy romper suits, keep rapists chained up in their basements for killing practice, and have plenty of hot lesbian action in the swimming pool. As The Warriors learned to their cost, the chicks are packed.