Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Bridget Fonda is a murderous, drug-addicted wreck who is saved from execution by Gabriel Byrne, an agent for one of those secret government organizations that assassinate people who are disliked. She's recruited as an assassin for the rest of her life or until she outlives her usefulness. She grows dissatisfied with her job.First of all, make up has done its best to turn Fonda into a violently psychopathic and beat-up dreg. And she STILL doesn't look bad. How could she, with that architecturally perfect bone structure? And when they're done training her -- teaching her to speak properly, how to kill with your flying feet, which wine to order with which meal, turning her into a blond -- she looks devastating. And the director has the good taste to have her running around in underpants half the time.Byrne with his crepuscular Irish voice and dark features is fine as her manager but he doesn't have to do very much. Once in a while he does his best to smile and one can hear the creaking of joints long unused. Alas, Fonda's love, Dermot Mulroney, is a thorough-going lightweight as an actor. And the script doesn't help him a bit. As his girl friend with a secret, Fonda is in their bathroom preparing to assassinate another stranger through the window, while, out in the bedroom, he's proposing they get engaged. Great tension in this scene. If we didn't know it already, the musical score pounds it into us.Here is poor Fonda assembling a complicated ugly rifle in the bathroom, her eyes filled with tears, while on the other side of the door, in a state of abject innocence, Mulroney begs for her reply. Get these lines. "Don't you think I deserve an answer?" And, "We need to talk about this." Now, I hate to point out the obvious, but no normal man would ever say anything resembling this. Women say things like that, but men do not say things like that.By the end -- by the time Harvey Keitel shows up to re-do his role as "the cleaner" from "Pulp Fiction" -- the director sensibly throws away all this role-conflict business and turns the movie into the action flick that it has yearned to be from the beginning.Once you accept the film for what it is, once you can bring yourself to ablate the presence of Dermot Mulroney and enjoy the sight of Keitel being scraped to death under the spinning tires of a racing car -- well, then, you've got it made.

Disappointing American remake of the French action classic LA FEMME NIKITA, this by-the-by action affair contains far too much talk and only two or three actually exciting scenes of action. These outbreaks of violence are refreshingly well photographed and well choreographed with it, but the majority of the film focuses on unwanted characterisation and even sentimentalising - pointless in a supposed thriller such as this.Amid the pointless bickering and stifling debate, we actually have some pretty good actors hiding here who lend more credence to their lines than they really should. In particular, Gabriel Byrne excels as Fonda's softly-spoken mentor with an eye on her wellbeing. Dermot Mulroney is also fine in a sympathetic role, while Harvey Keitel is superb as "the cleaner", a character who disposes of corpses by pouring acid on their faces! One of my favourite actors, Miguel Ferrer, pops up but is criminally underused in a corporate role that requires him to sit behind a desk and do nothing. On top of all this, there's even a cameo by Geoffrey Lewis. Sadly, the fine acting of these people is overshadowed by that of Bridget Fonda, who is truly pathetic as the guilt-stricken female assassin. Not only is Fonda far too thin and weedy to convince as a trained killer, her acting skills are limited and simply not enough to carry the film upon.Despite some nifty action scenes, full of shooting and explosions, this is disappointingly shallow stuff. Sure, it passes the time and is photographed well enough to at least LOOK good, but behind it all you simply have to wonder what the point was when the film had already been made once. A missed opportunity.

I got a chance to re-visit this movie on blu-ray years of having watched it on film, then VHS, I can honestly say...what a rebirth.The set-up is almost a shot-by-shot remake...but BOY does John Badham do it right. I LOVE the look of this movie. This is the reason you shoot movie on film. And why it should also be shot in anamorphic. The transfer is crisp and clean and sharp as a tack. The black is true black. Digital black is AWFUL. The color and contrast is superb to anything the Alexa, Red, or Canon can accomplish. This is a fact. If you can't see it, you're blind.As for the content, it's not terrible re-do for America. The one thing that the original brought to it more succinctly is the clandestine international flair. This seemed a bit...odd. Sure there are covert operators here doing dirty deeds. But it's hard to believe Gabriel Byrne being one of them. Bridget Fonda does a decent job. She plays the tomboy well, however, the sleek sophisticate...not so much. At the time, she was perfect. By the trivia, it seems Halle Berry may've been too young, but a Jodie Foster would've made it much more intellectual.Was there a reason for the remake? Probably not. I recall having watched "Nikita" first, outraged they'd remake it. As I've gotten older, this version is fine.

It's not bad but the French version (La Femme Nikita) is so much more intense, dark, better acted and really what this movie should be. The screenplays are almost identical so you don't need to watch both. The American version has no feeling to it, it might be all that cheesy rock guitar music in the background that you heard in allot of '80s flix. Bridget Fonda is fine but she is too cute to really be believable as this character. Everyone else in this just fills space including Harvey Keitel who plays The Cleaner, more like the robot. This is made like an '80s TV cop show, so if that's what you're looking for you hit the spot. If you want an intense well acted movie, watch La Femme Nikita, it's worth the subtitles, go watch that.