La Femme Nikita

Ever feel like robbing a store to feed your fix? Or maybe even wind up killing a cop while your comrades lay dead? I mean, what's the worst that could happen? Being recruited into a secret government agency as an assassin after your funeral is staged? Yeah, that's what. La Femme Nikita is an action packed story of a young woman who encounters this exact scenario. While at first unwilling, Nikita is eventually set up on her first hit as a surprise in a restaurant. After her dramatic and unlikely success, she is discharged from her training facility and must learn how to adjust to society with a new identity and dangerous responsibilities. After falling in love, Nikita struggles to juggle both her relationship and her job as a government assassin.

All seems to be going well and perhaps even better, when Nikita is informed that she will be in charge of her next job to kill and retrieve important documents for the government. Everything is going smooth until Nikita finds out that a crucial piece of information, the password used between the target and his bodyguards has been changed. A "cleaner" is called in to get rid of all persons involved, and Nikita is forced to impersonate a man she barely resembles to access the crucial documents. But everything is all down hill once the cleaner is called, and while Nikita did indeed retrieve the information, the messy outcome means she must now run for her life from the government.

After Nikita returns home, her boyfriend lets her know that he is aware of what she's being doing, and knows that she must leave. After she leaves, Nikita's supervisor from day one arrives at their apartment looking for Nikita. Her boyfriend informs him that she left the necessary documents and gives them to him, but it is also understood that Nikita is gone and while both of them loved her, they will probably never see her again.

La Femme Nikita is a powerfully seductive movie that captures the audience in the very first scene. Always wondering what will happen next, this film is the epitome of an action/suspense/thriller for its time -- 1990. One of the main themes in this movie is surprisingly love and sacrifice. From the very moment Nikita steps back into society and goes grocery shopping, she meets her love. And from then on, she strives to keep her alter assassin ego a secret from him to maintain their fun loving relationship. In the end, she must sacrifice this love to carry on living, literally. Another semblance of this theme is found from her supervisor. While the audience can tell that Nikita has feelings for him, and that he has feelings for her, he must sacrifice this notion for his job. And in the end, this love quite possibly works in her favor since he may not pursue finding Nikita to finish off the job that most certainly ends in her death.

I loved La Femme Nikita. After viewing the original French version, I had no desire at all to see the later American version. Even more so after viewing tidbits in class. Luc Besson's Nikita, (Anne Parillaud), is one of a kind. Just seeing the American version of her character completely turned me off. From the start, this film had me ready to see more, and if this "tv series" I've been reading about starred Anne Parillaud, I'd probably be buying the DVDs for all seasons. Her quirky character thrown into life or death situations is always suspenseful and action packed without all of the exaggerated explosions that today's action movies seem to require. Without a doubt, this movie is awesome. And I think anyone would love it, even those jerks who "hate subtitles/foreign films". It's just that good.