Nikita (La Femme Nikita)
1990
***
Director: Luc Besson
Cast: Anne Parillaud, Marc Duret, Patrick Fontana, Alain Lathière, Laura Chéron, Jacques Boudet, Jean Reno, Jeanne Moreau, Tchéky Karyo, Jean Bouise
A young drug addict named Nikita is sent to prison for life for killing a police officer. However, a secret government agency stages her suicide and offers her a chance to come good and work as an assassin. Luc Besson's iconic action film is entertaining and visually arresting, but highly implausible. When Nikita returns to the real world, she falls in love and yerns for normalcy, but is this well-balanced young woman the same person who has the maturity of a 5-year-old for the first half of the movie? Remade in Hollywood as The Point of No Return / The Assassin (1993).
