In the title role of this vastly entertaining French import, Anne Parillaud demonstrates both fetching vulnerability and steely determination — and it certainly doesn’t hurt that she looks swell brandishing a Desert Eagle Mark VII in a skimpy size-4 evening dress. Serving a life sentence for murder and armed robbery, sullen ex-junkie Nikita wakes up in a strange room and is given a choice: to be killed and dumped into a grave, or train to become an assassin for a secret government agency. She chooses the latter (because, really, who’d watch a film called La Spectre Nikita?) and goes off to a strange finishing school in which she receives instruction in etiquette, grooming, and the best ways to dispose of a recently discharged weapon. It’s a pretty darn silly script, to be sure, but writer-director Luc Besson gives a palpable tension to the techno-cool proceedings.
INTERESTING FACT: A modest hit, the film spawned a 1993 remake (Point of No Return, starring Bridget Fonda) and two TV shows, La Femme Nikita, which ran for five seasons on the USA Network, and Nikita, now in the middle of its second season for The CW.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vcT4r7Tljk]