Nikita

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This article is about the film entitled Nikita a.k.a. La Femme Nikita. For other uses, see Nikita (disambiguation).

La Femme Nikita
original film poster
Directed by	Luc Besson
Produced by	Patrice Ledoux (uncredited)
Written by	Luc Besson
Starring	Anne Parillaud Jean-Hugues Anglade Tchéky Karyo
Music by	Eric Serra
Distributed by	Gaumont
Release date(s)	February 21, 1990 (France)
Running time	115 min.
Language	French
IMDb profile

Nikita (re-titled La Femme Nikita in some countries) is a 1990 French movie written and directed by Luc Besson.

1 Plot
2 Reception
3 Remake
4 TV series
5 Other similar show
6 Trivia
7 See also
8 External links

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Nikita (Anne Parillaud) begins the film as a teenage delinquent and heroin addict who attempts to rob the pharmacy run by the parents of one of her fellow addicts. The heist degenerates into a firefight with the local police in which her friends are killed. Suffering from severe withdrawal symptoms, she then shoots one of the police officers. Nikita is arrested and put on trial. Convicted of murder, she is then sentenced to thirty years life imprisonment without parole. In prison, she is injected with drugs, simulating death.

When she recovers consciousness, she finds herself in an anonymous room. A man (Tchéky Karyo) enters, and reveals that although she is now officially listed as dead and buried, having committed suicide by drug overdose, in reality she is in the custody of the DGSE, the French intelligence agency.

Here she is given the choice of either working for the DGSE as an assassin or being killed for real. After some resistance, she opts for the former, and eventually proves to be a talented operative. One of her trainers, Amande (Jeanne Moreau), transforms Nikita from a street girl to a femme fatale.

Her induction mission, the elimination of foreign dignitaries in an expensive restaurant, is a notable set-piece sequence of the film. In due course, she is allowed to leave the training centre, and begins a new life as a sleeper agent in suburbia with her boyfriend, a man she meets working at the checkout of her local supermarket (Jean-Hugues Anglade).

Her covert career continues, until a mission to recover documents from a foreign embassy goes spectacularly wrong, requiring the services of a cleaner (Jean Reno) to destroy all the evidence, including Nikita.

[edit] Reception

The film received some positive reviews from critics including Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert.^{[citation needed]} The film was one of the early modern action films from France to have a broad worldwide appeal.^{[citation needed]} Prior to this time, much French film had dealt with the social aspects of society, with cursory action that was integral to the plot. Critics and filmgoers alike noted Besson's reversal and his take on Hollywood and Hong Kong action films, but with a decidedly French style.

[edit] Remake

In 1993, Warner Bros. remade the film in English as Point of No Return (also known as The Assassin), directed by John Badham and starring Bridget Fonda. Nikita also served as inspiration for the 1991 Hong Kong action picture Black Cat, which closely followed the original film’s storyline, but not enough to be called an outright remake.

[edit] TV series

The film was later spun off into the 1997 Canadian television series Nikita, which ran for five seasons on CTV, Showcase Television and USA Network and generated a sizeable cult following of its own. It was created by Joel Surnow, who later co-created 24 with fellow Nikita executive consultant Robert Cochran.

Nikita also ran late-night on the British terrestrial Channel 5 sometime after 2001.

[edit] Other similar show

Noir is a Japanese anime series consisting of twenty-six 25-minute episodes which is inspired by Léon and Nikita. The story tells about two young female assassins who are teaming up together in an uneasy partnership to search answers about their mysterious pasts. The show was a success in Japan, very well-received by anime and non-anime fans alike. It has been broadcast in France by CANALPLUS, dubbed in French, and receive similar success.

[edit] Trivia

In the accompanying DVD interviews, Besson specifies that Nikita was a breakout movie for him, as he divides his career into pre-Nikita and post-Nikita phases.