Colombiana is somehow considerably less than the sum of its parts. It’s not an awful movie, but you’ll find yourself forgetting the story while it’s playing out in front of you.

The basic story is boilerplate revenge drama. Zoe Saldana is Cataleya, a doe-eyed schoolgirl whose parents are gunned down in front of her. She manages to escape the narco-goons responsible with an impresive combination of poise and parkour. She makes a deal to get to the US, slips her handlers and finds her crooked uncle in Chicago. She asks him to train her in the ways of killing for profit, and in the worst display of uncling in the history of cinema, he agrees.

The rest of the movie unspools the way you’re imagining it might. She grows into a beautiful, rail-thin contract killer who has no life goals beyond killing everyone responsible for her parents’ murder.

None of it is any sillier than many movies of this type. The misfortune is that it’s rarely any smarter, or more interesting either.

We are asked to imagine that the terminally lithe Zoe Saldana is a master of a choppy martial art I’m going to call “Bourne Maga” and that her structural flimsiness doesn’t complicate her work. Fine. We are asked to believe that the police are unable to make headway against her despite the fact that she tags every victim with a lipstick pictogram of the lily she’s named for. Okay. We’re asked to believe that she can shimmy for miles in the ductwork of old government buildings without making a sound or succumbing to black mold. I’m a sport.

I have my limits, though. There is a scene in her training segment where her uncle attempts to show her the dark side of becoming comfortable with murder by killing a completely uninvolved civilian, in broad daylight, in a school zone, in front of dozens of bystanders. He then continues his lecture for a few beats and leads her away at a leisurely pace. His only concession to the gravity and peril of the situation is a minor adjustment of his hat.

I will admit that whole tableau gravely injured my suspension of disbelief.

The worst offense is the ending. This is a movie that somehow finds a way to give you what it promised and still leave you feeling shortchanged. I can’t recommend it, even on a plane. There are dozens of better movies with roughly the same plot that won’t strain your cognitive dissonance muscles so much.