Le Femme Nikita

When I first sat to watch "Le Femme Nikita,"directed by Luc Besson, I didn't know what to expect and by the time I was done watching the first half of the movie my feelings had not really changed. I was a bit lost to say the least. It wasn't until I had finished watching the entire film that I fully understood how smart and well made the film really was.

The film starts out with a fantastic scene that takes place in a drug store. The main character Nikita, played fearlessly by Anne Parillaud, and her friends are robbing the store. Nikita is in desperate need of drugs and needless to say when the cops arrive things get out of hand. A big shootout occurs between the police and the robbers and Nikita ends up shooting and killing an officer. Nikita is apprehended, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison.

In prison Nikita is offered a unique opportunity, a well dressed man tells her that she is legally dead and she has a choice to either become an assassin or be killed for real. Naturally she chooses to live. From this point she is trained to become an assassin and when she is ready she completes her initiation of killing a man in a crowded restaurant and escaping. Once she is released back into civilization she starts a new life with her new boyfriend who has no idea that she is an assassin. This becomes very emotional for her since now she has to balance a normal life with her boyfriend and also must assassinate whenever she is called upon. I thought this to be one of the more intriguing story lines in the film.

Everything seems to be going well until one of her assignments goes bad. This is where we are graced with a fantastic cameo by Jean Reno. His character, known as the cleaner, is sent in to dispose of the evidence. He dumps the bodies in a tub and drops acid them, but that also goes wrong and he ends up getting killed. After all this happens she decides to finally leave the agency and her whole life behind.

A big theme that drove the story of "La Femme Nikita" was the idea of rebirth. Before Nikita was a junkie who really had nothing going for her in life but then she is given this amazing chance to start over. The term rebirth could also be used in the literal sense since she was technically declared legally dead. Nikita went from robbing drug stores to fulfill her high to actually having a life with people who cared about her.

One thing about the movie that really struck me was Anne Parillaud's performance. The way she portrayed the character of Nikita was perfect. You really felt that though this women is trying to start a new better life, there are still tendencies from her past that she has to deal with. When you compare her performance in this film to Bridget Fonda's in the Hollywood remake you can really tell how superior Parillaud's performance is.