"La Femme Nikita" Film Diary

Summary
“La Femme Nikita”, is titled “Nikita” in France and was directed by Luc Besson, the same director that made one of my favorite films, “Leon: The Professional”. The film starts out when Nikita stays in the back of a van while her friends rob a convenience store owned by one of the friends. There is a shootout and everybody she was with dies. A cop comes up to her to see if she was okay and Nikita shoots the cop in the face. Nikita is sent to jail where she was causing even more trouble, and she was sentenced to life in prison by the judge. Next, Nikita is in a room, thinking she is getting a lethal injection. She wakes up and is in a plain white room with a man (Bob) sitting there waiting for her to wake up. When she wakes up she wasn’t sure where she was and thought she was in heaven. Bob explains that he works for the French government and that the French government had made everybody, including her friends and family think she was dead. Bob explained that if she would work for the French government as an assassin, she would be able to live, if not, she would die. Nikita thought about it and decided she would rather live rather than die and started her training. She trained for three years until Bob was told that she only had a couple of weeks left to become an agent. Bob took her out to dinner at a nice restaurant, which turned out to be a setup. He gave her a gun, wrapped up as a twenty-third birthday present and told her she had twelve bullets to kill several people and get out of the restaurant alive. He told her to leave the restaurant through a window in the bathroom. After she had killed whom she was supposed to, their bodyguards came running in after Nikita. When she got into the bathroom to escape, she found out that the window was boarded up with bricks and there was no way to escape. She went through the kitchen, and after a long gunfight, escaped through a garbage chute. When she got back to the agency, she found out that the assignment was a test to see if she was capable of being an agent or an assassin. She was told she would be called upon in six months for her first assignment. She found a place to live and was on her own. She met a man named Marco at the grocery store, which she fell in love with. Fast forward six months later and she was called upon her first assignment. She had to pretend she was part of room service at a hotel and deliver a tray of food to a room that was laced with explosives. Marco kept asking about her friends and family so she had Bob over to dinner and he pretended like he was her uncle. He gave them a trip to Italy and said it was for their engagement, however it was a setup for an assignment. Once they got there, she was given instructions to use a sniper rifle from the bathroom of their hotel room to murder someone. Her next assignment was to get some embassy documents from a man who was a powerful figure for another country. She drugged him and had found an imposter to pretend he was him. They called in another assassin to help, who ended up killing the imposter. She got his information and went to his office at the embassy to get the documents. Another gunfight broke out and the assassin that she called in to help was shot and later on died. The movie ended with Marco knowing that she was an agent for the French government. Marco was then talking to Bob, the agent that trained Nikita, and gave him all of the stuff he found of hers relating to her government work. The film ended with them sitting there talking, Bob saying how she stole embassy documents and there was nothing he could do to help her.
Main Issues Portrayed In Film
One of the main issues portrayed in the film is Nikita trying to find herself. When the film starts she was nineteen years old and was very irresponsible and immature. She essentially matured and grew up a lot longer than the three years she was in training. She went from being a tomboy and not caring about herself or her looks to becoming a beautiful woman. When she left the agency and was on her own, she was very confused. From what I could tell, she had never lived on her own before. When she went to the grocery store, she didn’t know what to buy. She followed another woman around and bought everything she bought. From what I could tell, Marco was her first boyfriend.
Reaction
Overall, I really enjoyed “La Femme Nikita”. Being an action junkie, I wish there was one or two more action scenes in the film. I thought the film was very well made, and as I said in the summary, I really enjoyed one of the directors other films, “Leon: The Professional”. I thought the script was written well, even subtle things like when three years past, they didn’t just tell you, they made you think about it by knowing she was turning twenty in a week and the next thing you know it was her twenty-third birthday. Some of the camera movement and directing was very good. I especially enjoyed some of the action scenes when the camera would be the bullet flying across the room. I also thought the acting was very good in the film. I was hoping for a better and less open-ended ending.