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DVD La Femme Nikita (Special Edition)
French director Luc Besson (The Fifth Element) broke the commercial taboo against female-driven action movies with this seminal, seductively slick film about a violent street punk (Anne Parillaud) trained to become a smooth, stylish assassin. Though it amounts, in the end, to little more than disposable pop, the film has a cohesiveness in style and tone--akin to the early James Bond films--that gives it a sense of integrity. Parillaud is compelling both as a wild child and chic-but-lethal pro (trained in good manners by none other than Jeanne Moreau). Tchéky Karyo is also good as the cop mentor who develops feelings for her. --Tom Keogh
"La Femme Nikita" could easily be dismissed as your standard action film involving a female assassin. Director Luc Besson has a flair for portraying action but the film is elevated by focusing it on the psyche of the title character. The film is further enhanced by a powerhouse central performance by Anne Parillaud. Parillaud is asked to tackle a character who through circumstance must adopt three personas. As Nikita, she is the soulless drug addict who cold-bloodedly kills a police officer. To gain reprieve from the death chamber she's reluctantly recruited into a government training program for assassins and is given the alias of Josephine. On holiday from covert ops and adopting the cover of nurse and loving fiancee she is Marie. Sometimes she has to juggle two identities at once as demonstrated in a scene where she is in a Venice bathroom with a high powered rifle targeting an assignment while her fiancee makes entreaties to her outside the door. It is in scenes like this that Parillaud shines because she demonstrates the strain of a woman forced into a life not of her choosing. In a sentence you can describe this film as the thinking person's action film.
Nice movie, but...
The original movie is very nice, but the English translation is very poor, and it really ruins the enjoyment of the movie. The translators were just reading it out of a scrip without getting into it, and you can tell. Too bad, because it is a nice movie, even though a bit too violent a times.
Great...if you don't mind it in English.
I purchased this DVD after becoming a huse Luc Besson fan from Leon and The Fifth Element, and wanted to see some of his earlier work. La Femme Nikita is a great film! However, I wanted to watch it in its original language (French) with English subtitles, but the subtitles have been programmed too quickly. They wont appear as the character speaks but will flash on screen in-between sentences. This made it impossible, so I had to watch it in English, which is fine, just not how I wanted to see it. Great film but, Luc rocks my world! JOEL
Luc Besson (The Fifth Element) made his American directorial debut with this stylized thriller about a French hit man (Jean Reno) who takes in an American girl (Natalie Portman) being pursued by a corrupt killer cop (Gary Oldman). Oldman is a little more unhinged than he should be, but there is something genuinely irresistible about the story line and the relationship between Reno and Portman. Rather than cave in to the cookie-cutter look and feel of American action pictures, Besson brings a bit of his glossy style from French hits La Femme Nikita and Subway to the production, and the results are refreshing even if the bullets and explosions are awfully familiar. --Tom KeoghMore Info about this DVD Actor(s): Jean Reno - Gary Oldman - Natalie Portman Director(s): Luc Besson DVD Release Date: Released the 11 January 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Ancient curses, all-powerful monsters, shape-changing assassins, scantily-clad stewardesses, laser battles, huge explosions, a perfect woman, a malcontent hero--what more can you ask of a big-budget science fiction movie? Luc Besson's high-octane film incorporates presidents, rock stars, and cab drivers into its peculiar plot, traversing worlds and encountering some pretty wild aliens. Bruce Willis stars as a down-and-out cabbie who must win the love of Leeloo (Milla Jovovich) to save Earth from destruction by Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg (Gary Oldman) and a dark, unearthly force that makes Darth Vader look like an Ewok. --Geoff RileyMore Info about this DVD Director(s): Luc Besson DVD Release Date: Released the 11 January 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Point of No Return is one of those Hollywood remakes of a European hit in which one can visualize a committee of studio executives sitting around and saying, "Okay, we know what made the original film unique and different and fun. How can we make that same movie and do exactly the opposite?" For-hire director John Badham (Saturday Night Fever) took La Femme Nikita, Luc Besson's undeniably sexy, original, and kitschy French film about a female assassin, and translated it into a calculating, mechanistic American thriller with no distinctive style. Bridget Fonda gamely plays the willowy street punk who becomes a high-society killer, but once that provocative irony is in place, the movie is pretty much a series of by-the-numbers action set pieces. Until, that is, Dermot... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Bridget Fonda - Gabriel Byrne - Dermot Mulroney Director(s): John Badham DVD Release Date: Released the 30 June 1998 Usually ships in 24 hours
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A hit in Europe but a flop in the U.S.--where it was trimmed, rescored, and given a new ending--Luc Besson's The Big Blue has endured as a minor cult classic for its gorgeous photography (both on land and underwater) and dreamy ambiance. Jean-Marc Barr is a sweet and sensitive but passive presence as Jacques, a diver with a unique connection to the sea. He has the astounding ability to slow his heartbeat and his circulation on deep dives, "a phenomenon that's only been observed in whales and dolphins… until now," remarks one scientist. Kooky New York insurance adjuster Joanna (Rosanna Arquette at her most delightfully flustered and endearingly sexy best) melts after falling into his innocent baby blues, and she follows him to Italy, where he's continuing a lifelong... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Rosanna Arquette - Jean-Marc Barr - Jean Reno Director(s): Luc Besson DVD Release Date: Released the 15 August 2000 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Brutal and breathtaking, Sin City is Robert Rodriguez's stunningly realized vision of Frank Miller's pulpy comic books. In the first of three separate but loosely related stories, Marv (Mickey Rourke in heavy makeup) tries to track down the killers of a woman who ended up dead in his bed. In the second story, Dwight's (Clive Owen) attempt to defend a woman from a brutal abuser goes horribly wrong, and threatens to destroy the uneasy truce among the police, the mob, and the women of Old Town. Finally, an aging cop on his last day on the job (Bruce Willis) rescues a young girl from a kidnapper, but is himself thrown in jail. Years later, he has a chance to save her again.
More Info about this DVD DVD Release Date: Released the 16 August 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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