La Femme Nikita

Nominated for nine Cesar awards (the French equivalent of the Oscar), Luc Besson's La Femme Nikita (1990) not only breathed new life into the spy thriller genre, but ultimately spawned both an American remake (the slavishly faithful 1993 film Point of No Return) and a hit TV series (1997-2001). Anne Parillaud won a well-deserved Best Actress award for her moving performance of Nikita, a street junkie who is arrested for shooting a policeman, but given the choice to die or enter a training program to become a government assassin. When her initial attempts at rebellion fail, she resigns herself to the regimen and begins the arduous process of redesigning her personality (in one of the most powerful scenes in the film, Nikita is told to learn how to smile: watching herself in the mirror she struggles to create a gesture which is totally foreign to her miserable life). While setting herself up in a new apartment for a future assassination, Nikita meets Marco (Jean-Hugues Anglade), falls in love for the first time in her life, and then tries to juggle her undercover "work" and her love life, discovering new emotions along the way (feelings which will ultimately affect her abilities as a "killing machine"). Occasionally verging on the preposterous in terms of plot, the heart of the film is Parillaud's stellar and complicated performance: part child, part woman, part amoral killer, part sensitive lover, Nikita breaks the mold of spy/assassin stereotypes. Sporting a solid widescreen transfer and a newly remixed Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, this "special edition" is a little light on extras; besides a decent retrospective 21-minute "making of," the disc includes a five-minute featurette about the music score, a rather pointless segment called "Programming Nikita" with three 30-second interview clips, an Easter egg that's not worth finding, two posters, and a trailer. Still, the film's the real attraction here, and this one is highly recommended. (R. Pitman) [Blu-ray Review—Jan. 6, 2009—Sony, 117 min., in French w/English subtitles, R, $34.99—Making its first appearance on Blu-ray, 1990’s La Femme Nikita features a fine transfer and a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 soundtrack. Blu-ray extras are limited to trailers and the BD Live function. Bottom line: although it’s unfortunate that the bonus material from the 'special edition' standard DVD was not ported over for the Blu-ray release, this excellent thriller has never looked better.]