The wonderful Luc Besson’s Nikita is probably the first subtitled film that I ever fell in love with.
Nikita is a drug addict who kills a police officer in a high during a pharmacy drugs-raid gone wrong. She is sentenced, but then given a ‘second-chance’ and recruited into a government assassin training programme.
This is a typically French gritty film, with some fantastic acting, and a brilliant Jean Reno playing the short on-screen part of ‘The Cleaner’ when a hit goes wrong.
Hollywood decided to remake this film into the awful The Assassin with Bridget Fonda in 1993, with even Gabriel Byrne unable to save it. I have also just seen today that a series will be starting on Living next month based on the film – I don’t know whether I will want to watch it or not, as I am sure it will be like a complete assassination of the film!
Nikita is raw, edgy and superb – although it is 20 years old now, and IO haven’t watched it for at least 10. Perhaps I should give it another go!
My rating – 9/10
There was also a late 90’s television series starring Peta Wilson, produced for CTV in Canada and shown on the USA cable network. It was a pretty good series, five seasons, 96 episodes (according to Wikipedia) but like most television attempts at maintaining this sort of mystery and tension, they finally find a producer or director that can only do so by introducing an absurd character or plot line which stikes the death toll for the program. The new Nikita has just premiered here on the CW, and I haven’t seen an episode yet.