Something about Clive Owen just screams international man of mystery. Look at his upcoming films: there's The International, about corruption in the international banking system; then he and Julia Roberts play corporate spies in Duplicity and now he's signed up for Cartagena, a story involving undercover work among Colombian drug-dealers.
This time, Owen plays an agent amid the Colombian cartels who gets caught in a complex plot, and has to elude not only the drug dealers but also international drug-enforcement agents in order to survive. The film's named after the city on Colombia's coast, one of the oldest in South America.
MIchael Ross, who wrote Turistas and has recently been working on a remake of Icelandic crime drama Jar City, has been hired to write the screenplay. Coming as it does soon after the two films being planned around the dramatic rescue of hostages from terrorist group FARC last year, and last year's adaptation of Love in the Time of Cholera, partly shot in Cartagena, this marks something of a high point for Hollywood's interest in Colombia, an interest last displayed in, oh let's say Romancing The Stone in 1984.*
We know there have been another few since, like Clear and Present Danger. But did they have a crocodile* that ate a giant emerald in them? No! We rest our case.