Recovered Classic: Nikita


Remember the inexcusable dross that was 1993’s The Assassin (aka Point of No Return), starring Bridget Fonda and Gabriel Byrne? It was yet another example of a botched Hollywood attempt to remake a successful European movie. Celluloid history is littered with them, but that didn’t stop John Badham rehashing Luc Besson’s sensational 1990 original, a flawed idea which was doomed from the start.

Why? Because Besson’s film could not be improved upon, at least not in the woeful manner Hollywood always seems to favour, by throwing money and big names at the project, crossing their fingers and hoping for the best. There was a rough-around-the-edges intensity to Besson’s story—about an anti-social female drug addict and murderer who is reprogrammed to become a secret government assassin—which gave it an urgent sense of post-punk nihilism. Badham’s version was simply too slick, too diluted, too, well, Hollywood. He just seemed to take Besson’s film, shove it through a sterilizer and have it rejigged according to the Tinsel Town by numbers screenwriting handbook.

So why is the 1990 movie so special? Well, it’s a Luc Besson film, so that’s always a promising sign, but its release just seemed to light a spark at the start of a decade which produced a clutch of genuine modern classics. French cinema contributed significantly to that dazzling list and Nikita is right up there with the best of them, a psycho-romantic thriller with more than a whiff of Pygmalion which even spawned a (forgettable) TV series.

Nikita is that rare thing, a film which revolves almost entirely around its magnetic leading lady, played here with assured conviction by the outstanding Anne Parillaud. The role demands a gutsy, no-holds-barred performance, because the central character undergoes such a remarkable transformation, and Parillaud rises to the challenge superbly, the only real question being why she never went on to carve out a more successful career.

In terms of her character arc, the first half of the film concentrates on Parillaud’s arrest (for killing a cop during a violent drugstore shoot-out), conviction, faked death and enforced enrolment into a secret government program which trains assassins (it was either that or the death sentence). The second half then follows the fully trained killer and waif-turned-bombshell into the big wide world, where she now has a new life and a new identity. Quick to strike up a friendship with a friendly grocery store worker, her integration back into society seems complete, but her “ordinary” life comes with a price, because that dreaded call detailing her next mission is never too far away.

In other hands this could have been run-of-the-mill stuff, but Besson (who also wrote the script) is on top of his game here, dispensing with pleasantries and making sure that the action rattles along from scene to scene and infusing frame after frame with his trademark visual fireworks. But he’s also careful to put a strong focus on character and even finds time to eke out the occasional shred of tender emotion. These moments are admittedly fleeting, but there is one occasion when Parillaud lets her guard down during her lengthy training under tough spymaster Tcheky Karyo, while she also shares the odd intimate moment with boyfriend Jean-Hugues Anglade, who seems oblivious to her secret life, believing her to be a nurse.

Essentially though, this is all about mayhem, destruction, anarchy, and women in tight black dresses with a license to kill. And whether she’s raising hell in court, stabbing men with pencils, chewing people’s ears off, carrying out hits or being tutored in the fine art of being a woman by Jeanne Moreau, Parillaud is utterly mesmerizing. She doesn’t quite steal every scene (Jean Reno pops up in a memorable cameo as Victor the Cleaner, who’s drafted in when missions go wrong), but she emerges from the bullets, bloodshed and mayhem (the restaurant shoot-out’s a gem) as one of the cinematic female anti-heroes, some would even say icons, of the 1990s.

David Lichtneker

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