A great movie - and don't get the dubbed version
Some of the greatest French movies have been remade for US audiences and no one knows about it: Trois hommes et un couffin/Three men and a baby, The Talented Mr Ripley/Plein Soleil (With Alain Delon - where do you think Matt Damon got his pointers?), Le Retour de Martin Guerre/Sommersby... among others. La Femme Nikita is yet another that is way above its American counterpart, The Point of No Return with Bridget Fonda, and deserves its own spot in your movie collection. The TV series doesn't count.
Nikita was written and directed by an (at the time) up and coming Frenchman by the name of Luc Besson (Subway, The Professional, the Fifth Element...) who has fantastic mind for action, eye for cinematography and sense for musical scores (Nikita has some great industrial sounds which you can also find in the Fifth Element). Released in 1991, this film pre-dates the canonized litany of films like Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction.
More importantly, and as some reviewers have...
Merde! Special edition fails to correct picture problems
The movie gets five stars, but this new special edition disc gets one. I own the previous MGM release of this movie which was widely known to have many picture and subtitle problems. I loved the movie enough to purchase this new version. With my fingers crossed, I popped the disc in...
...zut alors! The anamorphic widescreen picture quality is still lousy. Grainy, occasionally pixelized. Look at patterns in the background during the movie and the problems are quite evident. For example, in one scene when Nikita is in training and chatting with her trainer Bob in her room, a grill on a piece of furniture on the left side of the screen creates a hugely distracting pattern that always diverts my eye.
But we get some special features with this special edition, right? Only with the most liberal definition of "special." These empty chats and documentaries are considered standard features for most other DVDs, so I'm not sure what we're supposed to think is special...
A lot better
The "Nikita" hardcore can celebrate MGM's rerelease of the French action film, a single-disc affair that should erase memories of the studio's botched first DVD, from three years ago.
The initial "La Femme Nikita" DVD failed director Besson miserably, with visuals just a step up from the VHS. The new special edition looks a lot better, although some digital artifacts remain. Flesh tones seem true and the handsome French interiors get back their luster. Audio wasn't bad on the first disc, and it sounds about the same on the new DVD. The film comes widescreen only (2.35:1), with the 16x9 enhancement.
A new 20-minute featurette interviews the key actors, but not Besson. The director's music man, Eric Serra, has his say on an interesting 5-minute extra, "The Sound of 'Nikita.' " An easter egg reveals one of Besson's working methods.
Ann Parillaud, who played Nikita, looks a lot more relaxed these days. The actress recalls training with weapons and...
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