Nikita is a 1990 French action thriller written and directed by Luc Besson. In the movie, Anne Parillaud plays the role of a young criminal who is found guilty and given a life sentence for killing police officers during an armed robbery of a pharmacy. Her government controllers stage her demise and hire her as a hired killer. Other characters in the film are Jean-Hugues Anglade as Marco, Jean Reno as Victor “The Cleaner,” Jeanne Moreau as Amande, and Tchéky Karyo as Bob. Although Nikita was a commercial success, critics had conflicting opinions about it. In Hong Kong and Hollywood, it was remade as Black Cat (1991) and Point of No Return (1993), respectively. There were two television shows based on the movie La Femme Nikita (1997–2001) and Nikita (2010–2013).
Plot
Teenage drug addict Nikita assists in looting a pharmacy run by a friend’s parents. Her accomplices are killed in a shootout with local police after the robbery goes wrong. She murders a police officer while undergoing acute withdrawal symptoms. Nikita is detained, charged with murder, found guilty, and given a life sentence. Her kidnappers fake her death in jail, giving the impression that she overdosed on tranquilizers and then killed herself. She awakens in an unremarkable room where Bob, a well-dressed but intimidating-looking man, walks in and discloses that, despite being declared legally dead and buried, she is actually in the care of the Center, a covert government organization. She is given the option of either becoming an assassin or truly residing in “row 8, plot 30,” which alludes to her fictitious tomb. She finally decides on the former after some opposition and demonstrates her skill as a killer. She is changed from a heroin addict to a femme fatale by one of her trainers, Amande. Amande makes the implication that the DGSE also saved and trained her.
Her first operation, which involved killing a foreign envoy in a busy restaurant and escaping from his heavily armed bodyguards to return to the Center, served as both her final training assignment and test. After receiving her degree, she moves to Paris with her boyfriend Marco, a man she meets at a grocery store. Marco is interested in her past and the reasons why she doesn’t have any friends or family. Then, as “Oncle Bob,” Nikita extends an invitation to supper and presents the couple with tickets to Venice as a wedding gift.
Her career as an assassin is going well until an operation to steal documents from an embassy goes wrong, necessitating the dispatch of merciless assassin Victor “The Cleaner” by the Center. Victor’s job is to aid Nikita in saving the mission and wipe out all traces of the error, but he is shot by the embassy guards and perishes while trying to flee. Nikita is persuaded to leave by Marco after he discloses that he has learned about her secret life and is worried about how it impacts her psychologically. When Bob and Marco learn that she has left the agency, they meet to consider what will happen to her. They both concur that they will miss her.
Nikita received a 7.3 rating out of 10 on IMDb. You should give it a shot if you enjoy suspenseful action movies.
