French director Luc Besson broke the commercial taboo against female-driven action movies with Nikita, his seminal, seductively slick film about a violent street punk (Anne Parillaud) trained to become a smooth, stylish assassin. Though it amounts, in the end, to little more than disposable pop, the film has a cohesiveness in style and tone--akin to the early James Bond films--that gives it a sense of integrity. Parillaud is compelling both as a wild child and chic-but-lethal pro (trained in good manners by none other than Jeanne Moreau). Tchéky Karyo is also good... as the cop mentor who develops feelings for her. --Tom Keogh [show more]
Having first seen this aged 11 (loving it), and then again at 22 (not so much), "La Femme Nikita" is a movie that didn"t quite stand the test of time. Turning out to be a rather flimsy, over stylised melodrama, an unrelenting exercise in cinematic flamboyance, not nearly as cool as I"d remembered and a film eclipsed many times over in the 16 years since its release (once by Besson himself, with "Leon: The Professional").
That said, there"s still a lot to like in Luc Besson"s tale of a street punk forcibly recruited by sinister government forces to become an assassin. Anne Parulid is awesome; both as the petty criminal and the gun totting badass, in fact, "Nikita" is probably as close to a perfect "Modesty Blaise" movie as we"re ever likely to get. Infinitely superior to lightweight U.S. remake "The Assassin" and a fair bit better than the spin-off series, this is a fun, well-directed, neon lit throwback to the late 80s, when Besson proved that not all French films are about infidelity or cheese eating croissant lovers smoking in bed. Hit and miss.
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Please note this is a region 2 DVD and will require a region 2 or region Free DVD Player in order to play Anne Parillaud plays Nikita, a nihilistic punk who is given a life sentence for killing a policeman. Without warning she is transferred to a secret training centre where the mysterious Bob (Tchéky Karyo) transforms her into a ruthless government assassin. Actors: Anne Parillaud, Marc Duret, Patrick Fontana, Alain Lathière, Laura Chéron Directors: Luc Besson Writers: Luc Besson Producers: Luc Besson, Claude Besson, Mario Cecchi Gori, Patrice Ledoux, Vittorio Cecchi Gori Language: French, Italian Subtitles: English Number of discs: 1
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