Nikita and her junkie friends commit a robbery at a pharmacists. When the police turn up there is a shoot-out and three cops are killed. Nikita, the only one left alive after the smoke clears, is arrested and sentenced to 30 years in prison. Two mysterious men turn up and inject her with something. She wakes alone in a white room. A man in a black suit comes in and Nikita, thinking she is dead, asks if she is in heaven. The man is Bob. He tells Nikita that he works for the government and that with training she can too, or she can die. She chooses the training and after several years she is no longer a junkie punk, she is an assassin.
Luc Besson's second international hit and the one that really forged his career as an action writer/director is an innovative action thriller with a refreshingly strong female lead. Anne Parillaud gives her best performance as Nikita, tough, sympathetic and fairly complicated. Bob is played by Tchéky Karyo, a Turkish born, French raised actor. Well respected in France, he's appeared in several Hollywood blockbusters (Goldeneye, Bad Boys) that didn't really give him space to show the quality he has as an actor. Again, the viewer feels real sympathy for Bob, the government man who falls for Nikita. There are two extremely good cameos. The first from the beautiful Jeanne Moreau (Jules et Jim, Lift to the Scaffold) as the woman brought in to teach Nikita how to dress and use her elegance as an asset and the second from Jean Reno as Victor the 'cleaner'. Victor is brought in to dispose of the bodies and sort things out when a mission goes wrong. The expressionless psychopath is a precursor to the part Reno will be playing in Besson's next motion picture, Léon: The Professional, and although it's quite a small part in this film it's a memorable one.
The production feels a little cheap in parts but the action is explosive and the lead actors are very good.
The film spawned two pretty awful remakes, one from Hong Kong called Black Cat and one from the US staring Bridget Fonda, and two long running and very popular American TV series.
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