The first film I decided to watch was La Femme Nikita. It was made in 1990 and was written and directed by Luc Besson. The film tells the tale of a female teenager named Nikita. She is a troubled teen who is a heroin addict. One day her and her gang of friends try to rob a pharmacy (which, coincidentally, is owned by the parents of one of her junkie friends). Needless to say, the heist goes completely bad. The cops get wind of a bunch of teenagers robbing a pharmacy and head over to bust them. When the cops arrive, a shootout breaks out between the two groups on opposite sides of the law. Everyone in Nikita's gang ends up dying, while Nikita herself is hiding underneath a desk. When the cops find Nikita, to ask if she is OK, she goes crazy and shoots as many police officers as she can before she is taken down, which is one. Nikita is then taken to jail and her trial takes place. She is found guilty of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. While in prison, Nikita is injected with many drugs, and it is assumed that she has died in prison.
All of a sudden, Nikita wakes up and finds herself in a strange room. A man walks into the room, and informs Nikita that she is officially listed as dead. Her previous life is seemingly over, and she is now in the hands of the DGSE, which is the French intelligence agency. A choice is given to her. Nikita can either be killed for real, or she can start a new life as an agent of the DGSE. The obvious choice for her is to become an agent for the French intelligence agency. So, Nikita is put through a series of training courses. She learns to combat, how to use a computer, and other such things that would be necessary for one to know as a tool of the government. Nikita eventually proves to be quite the talented agent.
Nikita's first mission is to eliminate a bunch of foreign dignitaries in a very high class restaurant that she is taken to. This was probably one of my favorites parts of the movie. There was so much action and suspense in this one part. Nikita kills off her targets and then has to escape. Her "boss" instructs her to jump out of a small window in one of the restaurant's bathrooms. However, when she arrives to the window, she finds that it is boarded up by bricks. There is nowhere to escape. She realizes that she must improvise her way out of the restaurant as people are trying to kill her. Nikita resorts to her old ways and decides to go out guns blazing. She kills many people and manages to escape out of a laundry chute as a big explosion follows her. This mission was about more than just killing. The agency wanted to see how Nikita would handle herself in an unforeseen situation.
After a successful mission, Nikita is able to begin her new life outside of the headquarters of the agency. She ends up dating a man that she meets while shopping for food at a local supermarket. It is a good, normal relationship. However, Nikita kept her secret life from her loved one. She was able to continue her life as a secret agent while at the same time be a loving homebody girlfriend.
Life continued for Nikita as normal (for her, anyway) until one fateful mission. She was instructed to recover important documents from a foreign embassy. A mission that the agency thought would be routine for the very highly trained Nikita, things started to go horribly wrong. Things got so out of hand in this mission that the DGSE was forced to send out a "cleaner" to the site. What a cleaner does is just that, he/she cleans up any mess that is left by an agent. In this case the cleaner, played by Jean Reno (by far my favorite French actor), was instructed to destroy any evidence that would link the DGSE to this mission, which, unfortunately, included Nikita.
I enjoyed this movie tremendously. Once I was able to get past the language barrier of the film, I was completely hooked to the film. I think it also helped that I was a big fan of the Canadian television series that was a spinoff of the movie. That show ran for five seasons on the USA network. I am a big fan of action thrillers and this movie was definitely one of those types of movies. It was very well done, you were able to really connect with all the characters. I highly recommend this movie to everyone.
