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.

District B13

The first collaboration by the writer and director of Taken is a French-language action film that doesn't take itself too seriously. It's quite short at only 80 minutes and really has very little story to speak of, but the more violent aspects have a nice style to them that makes it a fun, quick watch. We've seen parkour get infused into various movies more and more like Casino Royale, but this is the only one I know that stars the founder of the discipline. David Belle is a rebellious figure inside a poor district of France that has been abandoned and walled off by the government and taken over by crime lords. After a cop is informed that a bomb has been stolen and accidentally activated inside the district, he and Belle team up to deactivate it and also rescue his sister.

What follows is a string of fight sequences and free running chases that are still fresh and entertaining five years after release, and do well enough to make the movie worth watching for action fans despite the meager plot and lack of big special effects. Everything, or most everything is done without wires or computer assistance, and it proves that you don't need explosions to be exciting. Luc Besson made a couple really good films before he apparently decided it was easy enough just to script a bunch of basic action flicks, but at least this one delivers on its promise of creative entertainment better than say, The Transporter. I enjoyed it.

Taken

I have to admit, my opinion of Besson's ability to make a script for and put together a kick ass movie was slipping a bit, but Taken showed me he still has some tricks up his sleeve. It's a bit light on plot and intelligence or subtlety to the dialogue, but it's the perfect vehicle for one of the most enjoyable straight-up revenge movies I've seen. You pretty much know everything you need to from the commercials that either focus on the pivotal scene where Liam Neeson's daughter get captured or show a montage of him beating the shit out of people. Put those together, and that's what the movie is. Morel's directorial debut was with District B13, another Besson script, and he really seems to know how to do action in the Bourne/new Bond style that I like so much, although the camera is thankfully a little less spastic when stuff's happening. The part is much more physically demanding than artistically challenging for Neeson, although he brings his usual great self to it and handles everything better than you'd expect from a 56 year old.

There's really not too much to say about Taken without just gushing about how cool Liam is. He's not just a good fighter, he has all sorts of skills that he uses creatively to look for his daughter. He gathers the clues he needs a bit conveniently and quickly, but it works to drive the very tight pacing forward as he tears a path of destruction to find what he came for. And when the action does get going, it's really quite good. To be honest, I wasn't completely feeling the movie for the first hour. There were some cool moments, but the biggest scene was a car chase through dirt that I didn't much care for, and it wasn't totally clicking. But as the film goes on and Neeson's daughter gets closer to being lost forever, he gets visibly more determined and starts going further to take care of things, and his desperation shows as the brutality of his actions builds. It's effective both from a story perspective and the fact that it makes the movie backloaded, with standout moments occuring more and more frequently as it approaches the end. There aren't any big surprises to watch out for or complicated repercussions, it's just an unrelenting, very direct film that puts everything on the table and says, "Here's what we did, enjoy it if you want to." And I did enjoy it quite a lot.