Nikita.

Nikita.

A brilliant and pleasurable piece of nonsense from the great visual stylist of French cinema. Nikita (1990), now over twenty years old, still manages to provide a diverting couple of hours of action, humour and entertainment that has not dated one bit. Luc Besson’s Franco-Italian high-octane thriller involves a nihilistic punk whose life revolves around crime, drugs and violence. During a robbery of a chemist owned by the father of one of raiders Nikita kills a policeman. She is arrested and sentenced to death by lethal injection. When she awakes she thinks she has gone to heaven but is actually in a secret government institution that have faked her death with the intention of training her to be a deadly assassin for the French authorities.

Jean Reno gives a new meaning to an acid trip!

The ex Mrs. Besson Anne Parillaud plays what is probably her most famous role as the 1990’s version of Stieg Larssons Lisbeth Salander, Nikita. Turkish born French actor Tcheky Karyo is Bob the man that is tasked with training our slender heroine and famous French actor Jean-Hughes Anglade plays Marco the man who unknowingly falls in love with a female assassin. The most memorable role is the cameo played by regular Besson collaborator Jean Reno as Victor ‘The Cleaner” a larger than life Besson character. Well worth a revisit.

The original poster.