Little Nikita

The renegade wants $200k... in 1988. Ten years before Austin Powers, this movie one ups it. Or one downs it. At least the renegade isn't greedy. Or intelligent.

The plot is all so whacky, nearly defies belief. Inexplicable motives by the bad guy, and hilarious incompetence by the US and USSR.

Considering there was literally only one FBI guy assigned to this case- involving over half a dozen Russian agents in the US- , they probably didn't want you to sweat the plot too much. Like a lengthy sequence where a pickup truck struggles to chase a commuter train. Hmm, where might that train be going? Gee, maybe farther down the track?

The Russian agent hangs out in the FBI agent's house so that he can capture Phoenix's character to use as leverage to force Phoenix's sleeper Russian agent parents to give the money to the renegade. Good thing the FBI agent didn't show up a few minutes earlier! It's a painfully glaring example of a script needing to move some characters somewhere else but can't think of any plausible way to make it happen.

And why exactly did the Russian agent keep Phoenix hostage after the handoff went south? Was he really trying to sneak him off to Russia? Despite Phoenix (who IS American) ultimately rebelling... oh, and the fact the FBI WOULD KNOW?

Of course not. Once again, it's painfully clunky script mechanics to get the characters together. Ugh.

Then there's a shootout/hostage situation on a pedestrian bridge at the San Ysidro border crossing, but nobody seems to notice. Yup.

What throws it for a loop is that most of the script would have played better as comedy or satire, but almost all the actors are playing it like a hard core drama. And the acting is really quite solid. Poitier and Phoenix have great chemistry here.

You could practically make a drinking game from how many times Poitier looks at the photos of the parents.

The script is just unbelievably ridiculous. The core of the sleeper agents with an unknowing son was nifty, as well as how this was discovered, by the kid applying to the Air Force without his parents knowing, triggering a background check. But wow did it go south from there.

Considering the renegade Soviet agent is killing people left and right, you'd think there would be some behind the scenes coordination between the US and Russians to solve the problem.

This was a fairly involving story, although it's better in the first half. After that, the kid gets annoying but then the film picks back up in the last 15 minutes. The story is about this teen boy "Jeff Grant" (River Phoenix) who discovers his parents are "sleepr" KGB agents, spies are out of the business. They have come to the United States to start over with their kid.

Meanwhile, an assassin is killing those former, or "sleeper," if you will, agents. "Roy Parmenter" (Sidney Poitier), an FBI man, is after anyone it seems. That last part is a bit confusing.

The story taxes ones believability here and there but is interesting most of the way. However, I thought Phoenix overacts in a number of scenes. This was far from his best performance in his abbreviated film career.

The fact that the basic plot of this movie is ridiculous fails to ruin it. FBI agent Roy Parmenter (Sidney Poitier) is interviewing Jeff Grant (River Phoenix) for his possible entrance into the Air Force Academy. While reviewing Grant's file he discovers that his parents Richard (Richard Jenkins) and Elizabeth (Caroline Kava) are not who they seem to be. They turn out to be dormant Soviet spies, `sleepers', who have come to the United States and started a life with their son, who has no idea they are spies.

I won't even go into how silly it is the way Parmenter discovers this, as if computers REALLY work that way. Suffice it to say, when he finally tells an incredulous Jeff about his parents, several other sleepers have already been murdered by renegade double agent Scuba (Richard Lynch). Scuba wants money from the KGB and if he doesn't get it, he will kill every sleeper on his list, the Grants included. The former boss to all these agents is Constantine (Richard Bradford), who is sent to San Diego to collect Scuba and take him back to Russia for punishment.

Scuba is finally captured, by Parmenter, whose partner was murdered by Scuba some 20 years prior, so he has a personal reason for wanting Scuba too. The aforementioned characters wind up on the trolley going towards the Mexican border and an exchange between Parmenter and Constantine, who has abducted Jeff, occurs. However, once at the border, Scuba makes a run for it and all hell breaks loose.

As I said earlier, as implausible as the plot is, the movie is actually quite enjoyable and somehow suspenseful. While you may find yourself rolling your eyes at certain points, you'll also find yourself chuckling at some of the dialog and situations the characters find themselves in. Loretta Devine, as Jeff's teacher Verna McLaughlin, is hilarious in the scene where she is caught in bed with Parmenter by Jeff. `No problem,' she says when Parmenter apologizes, `I'll just go topless for the whole student body!'

Despite the fact that Scuba is the ultimate enemy I found myself cheering him on because Lynch is such a powerful actor. You want to see him on the screen more, no matter what he's doing. The fact that he's not in the film enough is my only other complaint about it.

I would bet that of all the films young River Phoenix did in his short and sweet life, Little Nikita is probably the one where he played the most normal of kids. But it's that very normality that is the basis for the shock unfolding before him.

A rogue agent played by Richard Lynch who has specialized in playing really evil and loathsome types on the big and small screens is going around killing various sleeper agents that the Russians have planted over the years in America. Lynch is blackmailing the Soviets for big bucks to stop bumping off the deep cover spies. One of their top guys, Richard Bradford, is going to America to deal with the problem. As this is the time of Glasnost with Reagan and Gorbachev in some serious and far reaching negotiations, we don't want this to get public and blow up the summit.

At the same time while Sidney Poitier as an FBI agent is running routine background checks for armed service academy admissions, something really doesn't compute in young River Phoenix's background. It turns out that his parents are deep cover agents who've never been activated to do anything. And by an incredible coincidence I just really couldn't buy, Lynch is a guy who killed Poitier's partner many years ago and he wants him too.

You'd think that with this kind of problem a little below summit Glasnost would have been in order for the KGB and FBI. But no, they're both working at cross purposes for the same goal.

What Little Nikita does have going for it to give it as many stars as it does have is River Phoenix's angst ridden performance of an All American kid whose whole world comes crashing around about him. River's screen characters were usually quirky, but he could play a normal kid and well.

Phoenix's performance and the nice location shooting in and around the San Diego area are the only reason to watch this well meaning, but ultimately rather silly film.

Little Nikita is a well done thriller. I found it entertaining and well acted. I am extremely glad that the lovely Loretta Devine (who played Reese in Urban Legend 1 and 2) had the honour of working with River Phoenix before he died. For fans of River Phoenix and taut thrillers, check this one out.