Nikita (Anne Parillaud) runs with a street gang. They’re violent murderous thugs. Nikita is vicious and she’s a mess. After a robbery goes wrong she’s facing a life sentence for murder. Then she gets a second chance. She’s a dangerous psychotic but she’s good at killing people and she kills with hesitation or remorse. The government can always use people like that. She is given the chance to work for a government intelligence agency as an assassin.
She isn’t really given a choice.
The idea is far from original. It’s the basis for the greatest TV spy series of all time, Callan. Callan is the world’s worst soldier but he’s very good at killing. He is recruited as an assassin for the British Government. Like Nikita he accepts because he has no other options.
A great movie does not have to be based on an original idea. The best stories are very rarely original. The trick to making a great movie (and La Femme Nikita is a great movie) is to take an old idea and tell it well and give it some fresh twists. That’s what Besson does here.
Bob (Tchéky Karyo) has the job of training Nikita. It’s a challenge. Nikita does not like being told what to do. She has plenty of potential. She’s a natural killer. Eventually she is ready for a mission.
The movie follows her on several missions. This is a movie that can be approached as an action thriller and on that level it’s very good indeed. It has plenty of adrenalin-rush action scenes. It has plenty of suspense.
This is also however the story of a woman. A complicated woman. She becomes more complicated. While she’s learning to be an agent she is also learning to be a woman. She is learning to enjoy being a woman.
She is also learning that she wants things that other women want. She falls in love. Marco (Jean-Hugues Anglade) is a seriously nice guy. They would like to get married.
The problem is whether Nikita can have a normal life with a normal relationship with a man while also earning her living killing people. It’s not just the practical difficulties of keeping her two lives separate. She also has to deal with the fact that she kills people she has never met, people she has nothing against, simply because the government orders her to to do so. The government has turned her into a killing machine but human beings are not machines.
There are very obvious echoes of A Clockwork Orange. The government dealing with people who are seen as social problems by re-engineering their personalities.
And there is the same moral ambiguity. We come to feel sympathy for Alex in A Clockwork Orange but he is a vicious thug. Does that mean he no longer has the right to be himself? Does that give the government the right to change his personality? We come to feel sympathy for Nikita, but she was a vicious killer.
At the start of the movie Nikita is a 19-year-old juvenile delinquent who kills by instinct. She is not much more than a wild animal. It’s doubtful that she has ever given a second’s thought to this. Now she is a woman. She has grown up. But is murdering people for the government more moral than just murdering by instinct? Perhaps it is worse. Nikita has become a killer who is capable of thinking about what she does.
I like the fact that she is not a perfect killing machine. She cannot function that way. As a killing machine she develops malfunctions. At one point when things go wrong on a mission she just curls up in a corner sobbing. She has not only developed feelings, she has come to value her own life. She is now capable of experiencing fear, and panic.
Anne Parillaud is extraordinary. She manages, quite subtly, to get across to us that Nikita is not a whole new person. She now dresses exquisitely but she is not really a super-confident sophisticated woman of the world. This is just a mask that she wears. She is not really an ice-cold professional killer. This is just another mask that she wears. The messed-up juvenile delinquent is still there underneath. And the frightened confused little girl that she once was is still there underneath as well. So we’re seeing an actress playing a woman who is herself like an actress playing a part.
Jean-Hugues Anglade is extremely well. Bob is a swine who manipulates Nikita but he is perhaps not entirely a machine either. He may feel some emotional attachment to Nikita. We’re not quite sure. Perhaps he is not sure either. A spy’s life is based on lies and deception. Sometimes they can no longer separate the lies from the reality and can no longer distinguish between the masks they wear and the person underneath.
Luc Besson was associated with the so-called “Cinéma du look” movement. Any accusation that Besson favours style over substance can be dismissed in the case of La Femme Nikita. It has plenty of style and plenty of substance. It’s a superior thriller but it’s also a complex look at the life of a complex woman. Very highly recommended.
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