La Femme Nikita

Director: Luc Besson

1990 / 117min / DCP

Sentenced to life in prison after killing a cop, surly no-hoper junkie Nikita (Anne Parillaud) is made over as a sultry femme fatale assassin by a top-secret government agency, and seems to relish in her new role—until, that is, she starts to fall in love, and struggles to keep her double life concealed from beau Marco (Jean-Hugues Anglade), with a little help from Jean Reno’s brutally efficient operative “The Cleaner,” whose sobriquet suggests his exceptional ability to deal with messy situations. Remade in Hollywood and Hong Kong but never bettered, Besson’s Cinéma du look show-stopper brilliantly “combines hip violence, punk anomie, lavish settings and an old-fashioned paean to the power of love.” [The New York Times]