La Femme Nikita

The serpentine plotline of Luc Besson's La Femme Nikita begins its 117-minute slither when punkish, psychotic, and drug-ridden Nikita (Anne Parillaud) fires her gun into a cop's face following the stick-up of a drug store, and is promptly imprisoned. She is thrown into a dank cell, then injected ...more

Nikita (renamed "La Femme Nikita" for the U.S.) is writer/director Luc Besson's rhythmic, ultra-stylish, and gleefully ridiculous 1990 hit movie. A mixture of -Pygmalion, Diva, and one of John Woo's choreographed action pictures, the film was one of a subgenre of action pictures to emerge in the 1990s, characterized by tongue-in-cheek stylistics and a hip, film noir-ish sensibility. Anne Parillaud, Besson's wife at the time, gives the film a sullen, acrimonious seriousness often missing in ...more