The New York Times' Mike Hale
"Colombiana isn’t content to be a comic-book joyride (though it is that); it has pretensions to a more turgid class of revenge melodrama, along the lines of Tony Scott’s Man on Fire. It also has pretensions, period: Mr. Megaton sprinkles in homages to Francis Ford Coppola (Ms. [Zoe] Saldana’s rising out of the water like Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now) and Brian De Palma (the climactic sequence at a drug lord’s lair is redolent of Scarface). The overall effect is distancing; there are some early comic moments that have you laughing along with the movie, but eventually the clashing tones and preposterousness just have you laughing."

Advance Screening's Matthew Fong
"Were your parents murdered in front of you as a child? Well Cataleya’s were and she instantly plotted revenge. There’s something eerily cute when a little 9 year-old girl replies to the question, 'What do you want to be when you grow up?' with 'a killer' (in a Colombian accent). She reads Xena: Warrior Princess and wants to become a warrior princess herself. Cliff Curtis plays Emilio Restrepo, Cataleya’s uncle, who takes care of her and trains her to become an assassin. He sets her up in his late son’s room which is filled with guns and a poster of Scarface so you can see what her influences were."

Movieline's Jen Yamato
"...watching the film there are a handful of notable nods to Colombiana’s genre predecessors — basically, every Luc Besson movie, The Professional and La Femme Nikita, and even a touch of Scarface."

indieWIRE's Drew Taylor
"Instead of a young American girl tutored by an aging French hitman, though [as in Léon], Colombiana is first set in Colombia, with the aforementioned parent-murdering (the little girl’s father was involved in some shady cartel business). The little girl then goes to Chicago where she’s taken in by her equally shady uncle (Cliff Curtis). The little girl, named Cataleya Restrepo, after a rare Amazonian orchid, wants her uncle to teach her how to murder, which he rejects by randomly firing his gun at a passing car (and presumably killing a perfectly innocent pedestrian). “Is that what you want?” he asks her, passion bubbling in his Al Pacino-in-Scarface-accented voice. She says no, she’ll wait, but it’s a shocking, clumsy moment that the audience barely has any time to recover from.

The movie then snaps forward 15 years, to Los Angeles, where Cataleya is now grown and carrying out a cleverly elaborate hit job in a local prison. Her target is Latin American, and she brands the corpse with her signature (a curlicue scribble of her namesake), so we assume that this victim had something to do with her parents’ murder. It adds a juicy jolt of thrills to the ingeniously plotted maneuver, which has all the hallmarks of a great Mission: Impossible jaunt, with the added bonus of Saldana pouring herself into a slinky black catsuit."

Not A Supermom
"And after a hard day of killing, there’s nothing Catalaya likes to do better than to return home, strip off, do a little sexy-dance around her empty apartment, take a shower and then spend a full minute eating a lollipop. Just like Pacino in Scarface! There are a few call-backs to Scarface in this movie, as well as the Lethal Weapon franchise. When she visits the FBI agent tracking her, you can almost hear him say that he’s 'too old for this'…stuff... Thankfully, Catalaya abstains from post-mortem one-liners. But feel free to add some in your own head throughout the movie. When she is standing on a balcony in the mansion and raining bullets down on the cartel henchmen, I defy you not to think 'Say hello to my little friend'."

Tr3s' Michael Lopez
"The final invasion on El Don is something straight out of Scarface, complete with machine guns, grenades, and choreographed head butts. Unfortunately, every action moment in this movie felt a bit too familiar. Cataleya's jail escapes mirrored Mission Impossible, her fights seemed like Guy Ritchie retreads, and so on. Colombiana definitely brings the action, but somehow lacks the punch."

Associated Press

Watch the Live Scarface cast reunion tomorrow night (Tuesday, August 23rd) at 11:15pm eastern, on livestream. Al Pacino, Steven Bauer, Robert Loggia, F. Murray Abraham, and producer Martin Bregman are all expected to take part in the live reunion. All but Loggia have worked with Brian De Palma on more than one occasion, so it should be a fun discussion.

Well, they're off to an excellent start with that top notch talent by signing De Palma to direct the picture, which will be produced by Harold, Block, Tory Tunnell (Awake, Trumbo) and Paul Hanson (Oliver Stone's W.).

PRODUCTION TO START BY YEAR'S END; QED STARTING OFFERS TO ACTORS
Deadline's original story stated that principal photography was "due to begin by early 2012," and today's post from Fleming states that production will begin "by year's end." TheWrap's Joshua L. Weinstein, following up on Fleming's Deadline report, states that "with the De Palma deal closed, QED is starting to make offers to actors."

Harold has cited early Roman Polanski as one of his main inspirations for making films. Last year, he was signed to Tunnell's Safehouse Pictures to apply his talents to commercials as well as feature films. Safehouse is mentioned by Fleming as one of the companies involved in The Key Man. Harold has had his hand in many a project of late. At Safehouse, he wrote a treatment for the Meryl Streep/Tina Fey comedy Mommy & Me, which he is co-executive producing with director Stanley Tucci. He has also written Fountain City, currently in development at Safehouse with Andrew Adamson directing. After hiring Harold a few years ago to work on a draft of Zach Snyder's "ultimate zombie movie," Army Of The Dead, Warner Bros. more recently set Harold to rewrite an adaptation of Hiroshi Sakurazaka's time-travel space opera All You Need Is Kill, with Doug Liman attached to direct.