Nikita French film poster
Nikita, also known by the title La Femme Nikita, is a 1990 Franco-Italian action thriller film written and directed by Luc Besson. The film centers around a young female criminal who is recruited to work as an assassin for the French government.
The film has been remade in Hong Kong as Black Cat (1991) and the United States as Point of No Return (1993).
On television, the 1997 USA Network series La Femme Nikita ran for five seasons and 96 episodes. In 2010 it was rebooted with elements of the film and the 1997 series for the CW network with a different cast and additional changes as Nikita. It ran for four seasons and 73 episodes.
Many of the adaptations use similar story beats and sequences in their translation of the source material.
Plot[]
Nikita (Anne Parillaud) is a teenage junkie who participates in the robbery of a pharmacy owned by a friend's parents. The robbery goes awry, erupting into a gunfight with local police, during which her cohorts are killed. Suffering severe withdrawal symptoms, she murders a policeman. Nikita is arrested, tried, and convicted of murder and is sentenced to life in prison.
In prison, her captors fake her death, making it appear that she has committed suicide via a tranquilizer overdose. She awakens in a nondescript room, where a well-dressed but hard-looking man named Bob (Tchéky Karyo) enters and reveals that, although officially dead and buried, she is in the custody of a shadowy government agency known as the Centre. She is given the choice of becoming an assassin, or of actually occupying "Row 8, Plot 30", referring to her fake grave. After some resistance, she chooses the former and proves to be a talented killer. One of her trainers, Amande (Jeanne Moreau), transforms her from a degenerate drug addict to a femme fatale. Amande implies that she was also rescued and trained by the DGSE.
Her initial mission, killing a foreign diplomat in a crowded restaurant and escaping back to the Centre from his well-armed bodyguards, doubles as the final test in her training. She graduates and begins life as a sleeper agent in Paris with her boyfriend Marco (Jean-Hugues Anglade), a man she meets in a supermarket and who knows nothing of her real profession. Marco is curious about her past and why she never has any friends or family members. Nikita then invites Bob to dinner as "Uncle Bob," and he gives the couple tickets to Venice as an engagement gift. Nikita (under the name Marie) goes on vacation with Marco, but her happiness is shattered when she receives a call giving details about her next mission. From her bathroom, she kills a woman outside, and this leaves her distraught.
Her career as an assassin goes well until a document-theft mission in an embassy goes awry, requiring the Centre to send in Victor "The Cleaner" (Jean Reno), a ruthless assassin. Victor's task is to help Nikita salvage the mission and destroy all the evidence of the foul-up, but he is wounded by the embassy guards and dies during the escape. Marco reveals that he has discovered Nikita's secret life, and, concerned over how her activities are affecting her psychologically, persuades her to disappear. Upon discovering that she abandoned the agency, Bob meets with Marco, and they discuss what will happen to her. They agree that they will both miss her.
Cast[]
- Anne Parillaud as Nikita
- Tchéky Karyo as Bob
- Jean-Hugues Anglade as Marco
- Jeanne Moreau as Amande
- Jean Reno as Victor "The Cleaner"
Development[]
Music[]
Frequent Besson collaborator Éric Serra composed the score for the film. A soundtrack was released which included the original song The Dark Side of Time. The album was reissued in vinyl in 2020.
Release[]
Nikita premiered in Paris at the Grand Rex on February 21, 1990. In its first week in Paris, the film had 113,900 spectators. By 2000, the film had 828,867 spectators in Paris.
Following the premiere, the film was distributed to 15 towns in France, with Besson to promote it and have discussions with audiences after the screenings. Other cast and crew members on the tour included Éric Serra, Anne Parillaud, Jean-Hugues Anglade and occasionally Tchéky Karyo. The film had 3,787,845 spectators in France by 2000. It was the second highest-grossing film in France of 1990, but was not as popular as Besson's The Big Blue.
After Nikita's release in France, it was released in over 95 countries. Gaumont handled the sales of distribution rights separately; distribution rights were sold to Columbia Pictures and the remake rights were sold to Warner Bros. Nikita was shown in Montreal, Canada, in 1990. The film was very popular in Montreal, where distributor Didier Farre noted that the film was beaten only by Bird on a Wire and Back to the Future Part III in June 1990. In Britain, the film became the highest weekly box office ever for a French film, and it was also popular at the box office in Italy and Japan.
It was released in the United States in 1991. The film had a six-month theatrical run in the United States where it reached an audience of 1.15 million. It was considered a surprise hit, or "a fairytale", as Besson said. By the end of the year, Nikita was the third highest-grossing French film in the United States. Besson thought that the film was inappropriately promoted in the United States, saying that "Nikita is an action film but was released in American art houses. The Big Blue has the same problem, released in the United States as an intellectual work, and attracting the wrong audience.
Reception[]
Anne Parillaud won the 1991 César Award (the highest French cinema film award) for Outstanding Lead Actress for her role in Nikita.
Home Media[]
A VHS release of the film by Vidmark Entertainment came out in 1991. On October 3, 2000, MGM released it's own edition of the film on VHS.
The film was released on DVD by MGM on December 7, 2004. It contained several special features.
- The Sound of Nikita
- Revealed: The Making OF La Femme Nikita
- Programming Nikita
- Poster Gallery
- Theatrical Trailer
- Other Great MGM Releases
The film was released on Blu-Ray on December 2, 2008. It contained no supplemental features. [1]
A 4K Blu-Ray of the film was released by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment on June 11, 2024. The 4K Restoration came from the original film negative. It contained no supplemental features. [2] The packaging was a limited edition SteelBook. [3]
The United Kingdom received its own 4K release of the film. The limited edition SteelBook showcased different key art from the North American release.
References[]
External Links[]
http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDCompare7/nikita.htm
| This page uses Creative Commons Licensed content from Wikipedia (view authors). |