La Femme Nikita

Nikita is the film that put Luc Besson on the map, and while these days he hasn't done a lot of directing, in the 90's he made a few of that era's best action movies. My favorite is Léon, known originally in the US as The Professional, and I thought Nikita was almost as good. It's not too dissimilar of a story, either. It begins as a drugged-out murderer named Nikita is arrested and tried for her crimes, but she's saved from her sentence by the French government picking her for a program where they turn criminals into killers for the state. She's resistant to the training at first, but eventually she gives in and a few years later she's finally allowed to return to society.

But not before she assassinates a couple VIPs in a restaurant, of course. It's the movie's first big action scene, and sets the tone for what will become Besson's signature feel, violence that's stylized enough to be exciting but also down to earth and brutal enough to be unsettling. When her escape doesn't go quite as planned, Nikita's attempt to get out alive is truly desperate and perilous. Once she's done though, she gets to go, and as soon as she finds a place to live she falls in love with practically the first guy she sees. It's interesting how she allows herself to become attached to someone despite knowing that any time she could get a call with instructions for a hit. Her motivations up to the very end are somewhat mysterious, and she's a unique and enigmatic protagonist to be sure. Near the end Jean Reno appears in a couple scenes as a character that clearly inspired the Besson movie he would later star in, and his brief appearance is the worth watching the whole movie just by itself. It ends pretty abruptly and maybe in an unsatisfying way, but Besson's whole thing back then seems to have been subverting expectations for action movies. Definitely worth checking out today.