cinemajesty Movie Review: "Le Femme Nikita" (1990)Holding his production team together as a family since the hypnotizing "Cannes 1988" opening film surprise "Le grand bleu" going out from cinematographer Thierry Arbogast, production designer Dan Weil and score composer Eric Serra, director Luc Besson, inhabited with amazingly-convicted original story-telling abilities, creates a instant-classic of world cinema, when a female 20-something street pigeon get caught by the Parisian police and put into a sober-up special undercover spy program, led by full-powering screen presence multi-agile actor Tcheky Karyo, who supported by legendary Jeanne Moreau (1928-2017) makes a lady assassin out of the character of Marie Clement, who then will be known under the codename "Nikita" to deliver lethal as mortal combat assignments with charm, seduction, guns and hand-to-hand fights on mostly interior locations in Paris, when the first job at main train station restaurant "Le train bleu" already blows the audience away in Besson's cinematic signature stylings, when leading actress Anne Parillaud, at age 29, plays in sexy heels and black one-piece dress the action beats by the minute, when after 110 minutes the suspense thrills did not fail to entertain and any spectre must admit, we have been watching a independently-produced French cinema at its best, founding director Luc Besson as master of visual story-telling at just the age of 30.Copyright 2018 Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC

Joel Newman LA FEMME NIKITA's overrated. Don't be fooled by style; it's not a good film. The best scene's the opening shout-out (which is over too quickly); it's downhill from there. I saw this at the movies in around 1990 (it was titled 'Nikita' then) and for some reason thought it was okay but looking at it again it's not. It's actually a bit crap. It came out on VHS dubbed in English titled 'Nikita'; even though I'd seen it at the movies I watched it a number of times at home; one time with my dad (who was unimpressed); I remember him saying something about French films being slow; that's right! This movie drags on but worse; it's embarrassing. Whether it's the dubbed in English version 'Nikita' or the restored to French language version named 'La Femme Nikita' (as originally intended) it's at times embarrasingly bad; those flamboyant costumes in the clothes shopping scenes, the cheesy dialogue; the romance and on vacation/gondolier/Venice scenes which play out like a romantic comedy/drama something akin to Julia Roberts in 'Pretty Woman' until there's some action (which os over in a couple of seconds); the best scene was the opening shout-out i.e. the drug store robbery (which should've gone on longer). The story was a good idea. And was it stylish? Sure. Music? Very good. Photography? Tick. But there's an undeserved mystique surrounding this film 'cause it's French. One of the strongest elements is Tcheky Kayro as 'Bob'. Jean Reno's Victor the Cleaner? I preferred the cleaner played by Harvey Keitel in the remake Point of No Return (1993) aka 'The Assassin'.

gavin6942 Convicted felon Nikita, instead of going to jail, is given a new identity and trained, stylishly, as a top secret spy/assassin.This film had difficulty holding my attention. I wanted it to, because I know it is something of a cult classic. But it just did not have much going for it that interested me. The advertising even seemed weird, comparing this film to "Lethal Weapon". Huh? The best part was probably the casting of Jean Reno. Although he may be somewhat typecast in popular imagination as a thug or hit-man (see, of course, "The Professional"), this happens to be the sort of role he excels at. Being one of the guys with a gun in this film made it more enjoyable.

chaos-rampant This is an action thriller by Besson but shows a softer glint beneath the guns. A gun opens the night, fired by the heroine for no particular reason at all, a moment's whim but it takes someone's life, a karmic chain whirs in place. She then emerges inside a spyworld where she's going to be groomed to be the action heroine we expect, a figurative death has preceded.But something's off in this underground spyworld, the effort is not fidelity to genre. Her spymaster takes a birthday cake to her room, the room's walls are painted with scrawlings like out of a child's paintwork, this to underscore something we've been seeing for a while; a heroine who is childlike, irreverent, fragmented. Besson isn't propping here the cool silent image of the gun totting hero, he would later.I am reminded here of Ruiz's drawings of internal landscape using genre ink dipped in mirrors, he would later use Parillaud in a film I've seen called Shattered Image. A whimsical irreverence as she flummoxes instructors in the academy, this is all ostensibly under the pretense that she's being groomed to be the genre character but it's also the entry to what's beautiful here. Different portraits of this girl, the journey is to womanhood as a woman advises while doing her makeup, femininity as growing into and exploring your role.The role expects pain, as all roles do. There's a love affair, schematic but this is to quickly set up a next life where she has her own life that she shares, one of spontaneous gestures, joy that just wells up from breakfast in bed - nothing like the soulless Angelina Jolie products that explain plots. But what do we see of that love, what pain threatens? An ordinarily happy one but suddenly being yanked by doubt; 'Josephine' on the phone, and she has to drop everything and sneak out for the spy story where she has to pretend to be someone else, in Venice she has to worry about shooting a target while her man outside the door pours out a confession. Here nothing is really explained of the missions, we figure it but the point is the intrusion of a hidden self, the spying as doubt.I don't get from it the coercion and oppression of a beautiful spirit by society, this would turn her into merely an icon of purity. I see all this as the same obstacles, outlandish here to thrill ourselves on the side, that every life has to face as it struggles to realize magic in the havoc, truth in the duplicity of life.Ultimately Besson promises a better film than he eventually delivers, because the promise is masterful but requires an even more fluid hand; I imagine a threehour film in the hands of Rivette who gave us Celine and Julie about girls confronting the responsibility to a role. A third shift has her disguised as a man in hat and coat, abandoning her femininity to snap images of meaningless documents. The ending is poignant, we never really truly know what casts the shadow, this is even before shooting the gun, we're never told where she goes.