Popular reviews

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  Review by Naughty aka Juli Norwood ★★★★★ 4

  A pure adrenalin rush compliments of Director Luc Besson! Between Anne Parillaud's (Nikita) brilliant pygmalionesque transformation from drug addict/murderer to a government sanctioned assassin to debonair Tchéky Karyo (Bob) with a license to thrill to Jean Reno's (Victor) electrifying performance as the Cleaner La Femme Nikita delivers on all fronts!

  I'm pretty sure Jean Reno's powerhouse performance as the Cleaner in this film not only won him critical acclaim but eventually gave birth to the Smash Hit Leon The Professional!

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  Review by Dolev Amitai ★★½ 1

  La Femma Nikita is the film Lub Besson made before Leon.
  So obviously some hype is there.

  But unfortunately, it does not reach the same heights as Leon.

  Nikita suffers from something I don't see much in films.

  Its best part is in the middle. It is bookended by two rather dissapointing parts, at least for me.

  The first part of the film is a little confused, and honestly a little annoying.
  I get that Nikita is a drug addict, and now she will have to come clean.
  But, she comes off as incredibly annoying.
  For the first part, she is just an annoying drug addict.
  We see her training, but I never cared for her.

  Only after she changes…

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  Review by 20oldboy03 ★★★★ 13

  Feucht liegen die Straßen Paris reflektiert der Lichter abgehangener Schaufenster und sich erhobener Straßenlaternen nieder der verruchten Jugend ihrer betäubten Existenz mit LSD, Ecstasy, Heroin, Kokain, Crack, Hasch und puren 80% Fussel aus dem Supermarkt um die Ecke.

  Im Gleichschritt der Hammerschläge Èric Serras füllen vier Apokalyptische Reiter verruchter Jugend den Bildschirm aus ihrem abklingenden Rausch wie das Dröhnen der abreißenden Meeresbriese an den Küstennarben der Normandie hinein in die Weiten Nordfrankreichs.

  Nieder und hinfort gerissen aus des Vaters eigenen Wehr als der Anstoß Staatsgewalt und ihrer ratternden Maschinengewehre zerlegenden Mobiliars und der prallgefüllten Epidermis, wird aus dem abgeworfenen Reiter das Findelkind wie der Parasit Kuckuckskind.

  Daraus erblüht heftiger Gegenwähr widerspenstiges Gemühtes der isabellfarbene Vogel verhangenen Schleiers um die Dualität…

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  Review by Jayson Kennedy ★★★★

  Much like Léon (1994), Besson ambles effortlessly between the razor edge risks of a hidden life and the bigger implications of juggling the emotions of being human while operating as a machine. Anne Parillaud runs a marathon across these shifts developing a character that has the facilities inside to survive yet remains conflicted. Jean Reno shows up as a literal cleaner of bodily carnage that surely influenced Besson to pursue the actor for a now iconic similar character four years later. This leads to a fairly sedate conclusion that's not quite as impactful as the aforementioned Léon, but sees Nikita making an important decision regarding fate.

  Despite the passage of thirty years, Nikita rarely looks dated in appearance or style.…

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  Review by Sally Jane Black

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  It is disappointing that Nikita is pulled away from her profession by a romantic connection; she is a graceful, powerful figure as an assassin. The film defines her repeatedly through her relationships with men, from her co-robbers to Bob to Marco (to her targets...), so her eventual emancipation being empowered by a man feels like the final denial of her prowess.

  The film never satisfactorily explains why she was chosen to begin with (she killed a cop through guile? is she meant to be expendable? if so, why spend money training her?), and all we know of her life before is that she was a desperate junkie. Viewed through a lens of a redeemed life, her choices after training seem…

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  Review by Rafael "Parker!!" Jovine ★★★★

  Before Atomic Blonde or Anna, Luc Besson brought us the ultimate female assassin, ultra badass: La Femme Nikita.

  As in some way the staple of what came after, this was a really fun and entertaining watch filled with lot of great style and enough substance to get you invested into the story.

  There are some cool fist pumping action scenes, though nothing close to what we've come to love and expect of this particular type of films. Just like in its quasi-remake, Anna, the restaurant scene is top notch and probably the best out of the entire movie. Also Jean Reno small appereance was also a highlight. Speaking of which, there's also some very good humor, especially at the very…

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  Review by DallasFrance ★★★★★

  The word iconic gets thrown around a bit too much, but Anne Parillaud earns it as the titular character in Luc Besson’s 1990 film La Femme Nikita. When she’s the only one left after her gang of miscreants kills police officers during a robbery, Nikita becomes “officially” dead. The only choice she has is to become a trained assassin for the government.

  At first, Nikita is erratic in her training and almost feral in her physicality. Her posture makes her neck look like a curly straw, and her disinterested, almost dead-looking eyes peer out from under a tangle of multi-colored hair. Parillaud seems like she’s in a silent film for much of the first third of the film, and she acts at…

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  Review by Robin Moon (they/them) ★★

  This is a pretty big case of "dude writing a 'female power fantasy' that's actually a male sex fantasy." If you needed more confirmation of this, the final scene of the film isn't Nikita going off and living a happy life, it's the two most significant men in her life having a lovely chat about how they'll both miss her after one of them has torn up a note she left for the other out of jealousy.

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  Review by ScreeningNotes ★★★

  Nikita's employers don't care for her, she's just a tool to them, but Bob at least pretends to care; whether we ultimately read his fondness as genuine or affected, as romantic or familial, the magnitude of that fondness is strong. But he's part of this same abusive, exploitative system that continues to oppress Nikita. Nikita and Bob's personal relationship will always be mediated by their business relationship, and Besson loves ruminating on the complications arising from this type of connection throughout his work. His characters are often entangled in webs of subjugation to looming, monolithic agencies, generally either the government (whether terrestrial or intergalactic) or organized crime (the two of which seem to be interchangeable for Besson; can't really argue…

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  Review by Raphael Georg Klopper ★★★★

  What happens when you put John Woo Hong-Kong action with the Ian Fleming Bond catalogue of gritty-espionage literature, all together in the Luc Besson’s cinéma du look blender of style over substance, plus all his corny, wanabe artsy and comically heartfelt tendencies?

  La Femme Nikita is the born child of the Sarah Connor/Ellen Ripley legacy, that became the staple to any quality female-led action hero of late 20th century onwards, even despite current detractors love to point all its dated flaws, while its small cultural impact over a western-mainstream action market is quite undeniable to see.

  Given Besson’s passion for his own limited creativity, taking familiar novelty and genre tropes of spy thrillers and macho actioners and giving it his…

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  Review by Matthew Noble ★★★★½

  "There are two things that are infinite: femininity and means to take advantage of it."

  So many action films can risk feeling static in terms of concept or execution. Respectable, conventional, just plain naff. And then you get films like this.

  There is so much style on display here. You can immediately sense how influential La Femme Nikita must've been when it came out. No other action flick from that time looks or feels the same, outside of John Woo's Hong Kong joints. And even Woo's movies never had a narrative that unfolded with such tactical precision.

  Just as the story of Nikita is always evolving, the character of Nikita is constantly transforming. Criminal, prisoner, student, killer... Anne Parillaud is…

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  Review by Double_Dubs ★★★★ 4

  La Femme Nikita showcases Besson's heyday- high concept action thriller used as a vehicle for fantasy, where conventional narrative steps aside to showcase poignant, if not shameless, sentiment. The resulting work delivers the premise's promise of stylized action violence meets giddy spy fiction. It's equal parts pro-fem as it is fem-in-power fetishization, which banks on throwing the simultaneously callous and susceptible Nikita into susceptible situations. (And we can't help but root for her physical and, more importantly, emotional safety.)

  Then there's the side of the film more interested in telling a hopelessly fantastical romance rather than conventional testosterone-fueled action helter-skelter. Where Besson wins is in his love for wistful storytelling.

  Leon is one of the best pieces of entertainment ever…