Nom de code: Nina

Yes, it's a bad remake of La Femme Nikita--yes, it's overly violent and amoral (but so was the original)--yes, it's REALLY stupid, but I enjoyed it. It moves quickly, Fonda manages to give out a pretty good performance and it's certainly never boring. If you can turn off your brain, and sit through bursts of graphic violence (and a really sick sequence involving Harvey Keitel as "The Cleaner") you should be able to enjoy it. No great movie, just a really good bad movie. Critics predictably hated this movie. There's a now infamous review from the "New Yorker" magazine that's only 9 words long--"The end of French cinema as we know it." Ignore them--this is lots of fun.

This movie is pretty much a shot-for-shot remake of the French film "La Femme Nikita" by Luc Besson. I'll say right off the bat that I strongly suggest watching that one instead, since they are virtually indistinguishable but this one is just a clone, a (not so cheap) imitation.

As with many foreign films that are remade for American audiences (like "Let the Right One In," "Funny Games," or "Infernal Affairs"), I'm often left feeling hollow after viewing both versions. The original was, well, original, which is why it gained international acclaim at the time, opening doors to Luc Besson for productions like "Leon" and "The Fifth Element." With this Americanized repeat, there's nothing added, no extra twist, no real reason to remake a perfectly good first film, other than the fact that Americans don't like to read subtitles. It's no wonder Luc Besson refused the offer to direct; seems pretty boring for an artist to make the exact same movie again within five years of the first.

Don't get me wrong, it's a perfectly watchable film, but I'm not liable to give it any credit beyond that since the whole thing was lifted from a movie made only a few years before this. Bridget Fonda is solid, and makes the transition from despicable junkie to government assassin pretty believable. Gabriel Byrne, of course, does well in his role, but I think this character has a very limited range compared to that of which he is capable. Dermot Mulroney is easy on the eyes but his character is not particularly memorable.

Good action, a little romance, and Bridget Fonda kicking ass. Plus a small role for Harvey Keitel at his peak, fresh off of "Reservoir Dogs" and "Bad Lieutenant." The shootouts are pretty par for the 90's, with squibs exploding everywhere and the usual shots of the protagonist diving through the air in slow motion. At the time, the role-reversal of having a female spy/assassin as the lead was pretty unique, but nowadays, of course, that is not so uncommon at all.

Summary: totally watchable, but totally unnecessary.

I thought this flick was good, and I'm SO glad that the film didn't resort to the typical Hollywood ending that other American remakes do (though it differed just a bit from the original "Nikita").

Admittedly, I'm biased in that I'm getting to be a big Bridget Fonda fan. And I agree with another reviewer that Fonda played a more likable character than the one in the French original.

Plus, the DVD's sound is great, though the picture is grainy.

All in all, a good film that doesn't deserve all the mudslinging it has gotten.

You can't truly appreciate how good La Femme Nikita was until you have seen Point of no Return. Bridget Fonda stars as Maggie, the drug addict who is sentenced to death after killing a cop but is given a second chance if she will train to be a secret agent. The film is pretty much remade scene for scene from Nikita with a few small changes here and there except this time all of the original's artistic integrity is sacrificed for mindless action sequences and unneeded sex scenes. Fonda is good as a female action lad but fails to capture the inner struggle Nikita faced from having to live a double life. Also the burning sexual tension from the original is now reduced to nothing more than petty conflict between Maggie and her boyfriend. Bob from the original film was played with a stern sense of hope, you knew he was there for nothing more than to train these people but you could tell in his actions that he did care. Here Gabriel Byrne does not seem tough and uncaring making any feelings he could have had for Maggie seem rather meaningless. Even the line "I will never kiss you again"seems rather out of context, Not only that but most of the other more important scenes from Nikita mean next to nothing, for instance when Nikita pulled the gun out of the bath tub while crying, symbolizing the toil of having to secretly live as someone else. Harvey Keitel is a good actor but is given a thankless role here as Victor the cleaner, coming nowhere close to Jean Reno's dramatic intensity and dark sense of humour. Probably the most disappointing aspect of the film is that there are no cameos from original cast members or no homage paid to Luc Besson's artistic masterpiece, it is just a remake made to suit the modern masses. The ending of the film is basically the same except made a little more accessible but also losses the sense of tragedy, lessening the overall impact of the film in general. The only reason I could see people enjoying this film is if they have not seen La Femme Nikita or those who found the original hard to follow due to the subtitles. Other than that there was really no need for this film to be made or for people to watch it.

"Point of No Return", or "The Assassin" as it is known here in Britain, is, of course, a remake of Luc Besson's French thriller "Nikita", and keeps closely to the plot of the original, although the action is transferred from France to America. Some of the names, such as Victor or Amande/Amanda, are the same as, or very close to, those used in the original film, although the name of the main character is changed from Nikita to Maggie. (Besson had, for reasons best known to himself, given his heroine a masculine Russian Christian name).

Like Nikita, Maggie is a criminal and drug addict who murders a policeman during a raid on a pharmacy, a crime for which she is sentenced to death. The sentence is, apparently, carried out soon after the trial, but in reality Maggie's life is spared. (The film-makers ignore the fact that in America any death sentence is automatically subject to a lengthy series of appeals and reviews; in California, where the film is set, only thirteen people, out of nearly seven hundred sentenced to death, have been executed during the last thirty years). She is given the option of being trained to work for the Government as a professional assassin; if she refuses she will be killed and buried beneath the tombstone which already bears her name.

Roger Ebert compares Maggie to a modern-day Eliza Dolittle, the heroine of Shaw's "Pygmalion". This may seem an odd comparison, given the nature of the work Maggie is being trained to do, but it is in fact an apt one. The modern assassin must master not only martial arts, weapons skills and computer technology but also such matters as deportment, polite conversation, fine dining and the art of looking beautiful. The rationale is presumably that, as Maggie may be called upon to kill members of America's high society, she needs to know how to behave in their company. The tuition she receives is obviously effective; Maggie enters her charm school with the social graces of an alley-cat and leaves with those of a débutante. For all her poise and glamour, however, she also has the skills of a ruthless killer.

The Government resettle Maggie in Venice Beach where she poses, under an assumed name, as an IT consultant and finds a boyfriend. Occasionally, however, she is called upon to take out a target whom the Government want dead, either by delivering a bomb to their hotel room or shooting them dead in the street. At first she is happy to go along with their instructions, but begins to develop a conscience about what she is doing, and wants to leave her job.

The idea of remaking a modern foreign-language film in English and with an American setting was anathema to many purists, particularly to those (on both sides of the Atlantic) who see Europe as the home of High Culture and America as a land of vulgar Philistines who are too lazy to bother with reading subtitles. This, however, was a view which I found unfair, as "Nikita" did not lose much, if anything, in translation when it was remade. Contrary to what some might think, not every French or European film is an art-house classic; Besson's was a commercial thriller which was itself influenced by American models, especially neo-noir. Film noir, as the name might suggest, has always been appreciated in the French cinema; the influence of Besson's model on John Badham's film might be seen as France's repayment of its debt to America.

Moreover, "The Assassin" has many virtues in its own right. It makes effective use of music; there is a memorable score from Hans Zimmer, possibly influenced by David Hentschel's music for "Educating Rita". The soundtrack also features several songs by Nina Simone, a particular passion of Maggie's. (This seemed a rather conservative taste for a young woman of her generation, but the explanation is that Maggie's enthusiasm derives from her mother).

Bridget Fonda (who has clearly inherited the classic good looks of her Auntie Jane) is very good as the heroine, both as the anti-social rebel of the early scenes and the sophisticated, seductive young lady of the later ones. There are effective cameos from Anne Bancroft as Amanda, Maggie's tutor in the social arts, and from Harvey Keitel as Victor the Cleaner, the ruthless, deadpan killer called in to "clean up" when one of her jobs unexpectedly goes wrong. There is a larger contribution from Gabriel Byrne as Maggie's handler, Bob, a key role as the relationship between the two is a complicated one. At first Bob is only able to handle her by making veiled (and sometimes open) threats about what will happen if she does not co-operate, but later he grows close to her, almost like a substitute father. (She passes him off to her boyfriend as her uncle). He is sympathetic to her desire to leave her job, but his hands are tied by the attitude of his superiors.

As a thriller, "The Assassin" is a fast-paced and exciting one, but it may also have a deeper significance as a critique of the death penalty. Maggie's development parallels that of Burt Lancaster's character Robert Stroud in "The Birdman of Alcatraz", who also starts off as a vicious, conscienceless killer and gradually grows in humanity There is an obvious irony in the fact that she is sentenced to death for murder and that her life is then spared so that she may commit further murders on behalf of the State that has sentenced her. The further irony is that it is her career as an assassin which teaches her the value of human life. 7/10