Much like Léon (1994), Besson ambles effortlessly between the razor edge risks of a hidden life and the bigger implications of juggling the emotions of being human while operating as a machine. Anne Parillaud runs a marathon across these shifts developing a character that has the facilities inside to survive yet remains conflicted. Jean Reno shows up as a literal cleaner of bodily carnage that surely influenced Besson to pursue the actor for a now iconic similar character four years later. This leads to a fairly sedate conclusion that's not quite as impactful as the aforementioned Léon, but sees Nikita making an important decision regarding fate.

Despite the passage of thirty years, Nikita rarely looks dated in appearance or style.…

La Femma Nikita is the film Lub Besson made before Leon.
So obviously some hype is there.

But unfortunately, it does not reach the same heights as Leon.

Nikita suffers from something I don't see much in films.

Its best part is in the middle. It is bookended by two rather dissapointing parts, at least for me.

The first part of the film is a little confused, and honestly a little annoying.
I get that Nikita is a drug addict, and now she will have to come clean.
But, she comes off as incredibly annoying.
For the first part, she is just an annoying drug addict.
We see her training, but I never cared for her.

Only after she changes…

Before Atomic Blonde or Anna, Luc Besson brought us the ultimate female assassin, ultra badass: La Femme Nikita.

As in some way the staple of what came after, this was a really fun and entertaining watch filled with lot of great style and enough substance to get you invested into the story.

There are some cool fist pumping action scenes, though nothing close to what we've come to love and expect of this particular type of films. Just like in its quasi-remake, Anna, the restaurant scene is top notch and probably the best out of the entire movie. Also Jean Reno small appereance was also a highlight. Speaking of which, there's also some very good humor, especially at the very…

La Femme Nikita showcases Besson's heyday- high concept action thriller used as a vehicle for fantasy, where conventional narrative steps aside to showcase poignant, if not shameless, sentiment. The resulting work delivers the premise's promise of stylized action violence meets giddy spy fiction. It's equal parts pro-fem as it is fem-in-power fetishization, which banks on throwing the simultaneously callous and susceptible Nikita into susceptible situations. (And we can't help but root for her physical and, more importantly, emotional safety.)

Then there's the side of the film more interested in telling a hopelessly fantastical romance rather than conventional testosterone-fueled action helter-skelter. Where Besson wins is in his love for wistful storytelling.

Leon is one of the best pieces of entertainment ever…

"There are two things that are infinite: femininity and means to take advantage of it."

So many action films can risk feeling static in terms of concept or execution. Respectable, conventional, just plain naff. And then you get films like this.

There is so much style on display here. You can immediately sense how influential La Femme Nikita must've been when it came out. No other action flick from that time looks or feels the same, outside of John Woo's Hong Kong joints. And even Woo's movies never had a narrative that unfolded with such tactical precision.

Just as the story of Nikita is always evolving, the character of Nikita is constantly transforming. Criminal, prisoner, student, killer... Anne Parillaud is…

After she is sentenced to life in prison, Nikita, a teenage hoodlum played by Anne Parillaud, is given a second chance by a shadowy government agency that orchestrates her fake death and subsequently trains her to be a skilled assassin femme fatale. With the help of a hard-edged mentor, played by Tchéky Karyo, and an etiquette trainer, played by Jeanne Moreau, she is unleashed into the world for a series of top secret missions after making the transition from a feral punk to a glamorous firearms expert.  She soon falls in love with a grocer, played by Jean-Hugues Anglade, and yearns for a life without killing and destruction, but her government controllers have no plans to let go of their…

45/100

Luc Besson is a director whose films I like less and less each time I revisit them. Leon the Professional has slightly fallen from grace with me, and I have discovered that Lucy isn't exactly the misunderstood art house masterpiece I thought it once was, and rather a jumbled up mess that tries to disguise itself as art. La Femme Nikita, an earlier effort from Besson, starts off much stronger than a lot of his other films have, but sadly everything after the thrilling opening sequence is nothing short of disappointing.

Perhaps my biggest issue with this film was that the lead character just wasn't an interesting person. I get that hitmen are supposed to be blank canvases that…