Nikita (Anne Parillaud) is a street punk and drug addict who gets mixed up with the wrong crowd. One day, they decide to rob a pharmacy to get their latest fix, but things go awry, and several law enforcement agents end up dead. Nikita is convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole. However, a government agency has other plans. Instead of a prison cell, Nikita wakes up in a stark room, where a man named Bob (Tcheky Karyo) tells her that they faked her death, and want to give her a new chance to make amends. She can either train to be an assassin, or her faked death will become a reality. So without much of a choice, she agrees. They clean her up, and teach her how to walk, talk, smile and fight. They turn her into a glamorous spy and killing machine, who can blend in and get close to her targets undetected, before using her combat and weapons skills to take them out. When she suddenly finds herself in the middle of a trial by fire, these new skills are put to the test.
While she has been well-trained, Nikita still lacks a bit of confidence. This isn’t necessarily the life that she wants. When Nikita falls in love with supermarket cashier Marco (Jean-Hugues Anglade)—who only knows her by her alias, Marie Clément—she struggles to balance her two worlds, and keep her secret life from Marco. She hates lying to him, and the deception is made even tougher by her handler, Bob, who gets some kind of perverse pleasure springing missions on her without any warning. Can Nikita somehow find a way to live a normal life with her true love?!
It has been decades since I last saw this film, so I was quite delighted to revisit it, and was glad to see that it holds up quite well. While the film has some very iconic and exciting action sequences, it was much more of a drama than I had remembered (not that that is necessarily a bad thing). I am a big fan of writer/director Luc Besson (Léon: The Professional, The Fifth Element), and he has this wonderful ability to flesh out his characters to make the viewer really get invested in and care about them. He also does a nice job of sprinkling bits of humor into his scripts. Besson wasn’t really a big name to U.S. audiences when this film was first released over 30 years ago. In fact, the English-language remake he created three years afterwards, Point of No Return, made six times as much money at the box office. But, in my opinion, the original is still the superior version of this story. We also get a nice cameo from one of Besson’s regular collaborators, Jean Reno, as a professional cleaner who is assigned to work with Nikita—there is no doubt that this inspired Reno’s role in Léon: The Professional.
For its first 4K UHD venture, La Femme Nikita has been restored from the original camera negative and presented it in 4K resolution with Dolby Vision. The results are quite stunning, and easily the best the film has ever looked. The picture is clean, with a pleasant and natural level of film grain. Details and clarity are excellent, especially in faces, clothing and other textures. Colors really pop, whether it’s the more stylized look of the earlier scenes with Nikita and her punk gang, or Nikita making her iconic fiery escape through a restaurant kitchen, the more natural lighting of Nikita in her hotel bathroom assembling a sniper rifle, or the more colorful landscapes of Venice as Nikita goes on a romantic gondola ride.
The Dolby TrueHD audio track may be identical to the previous Blu-ray release. It is offered both in the original French as well as an English dub. The track sounds great, providing clear dialogue throughout as well as a somewhat immersive experience, which is quite noticeable during the film’s more action-packed scenes, such as the chaos of the shootout in the pharmacy in the film’s opening sequence.
Sony’s 4K release features beautiful new SteelBook packaging, wrapped with a J-card providing details about the film and the disc contents. The release only includes a barebones 4K disc, which resides on the right side of the case. Like the previous Blu-ray release, there is no digital copy or bonus material included. This is a bit disappointing that it’s been over 30 years and this film still no has bonus material! It’s a shame they couldn’t dig up any deleted scenes or behind-the-scenes footage, or do some retrospective interviews, or even include the film’s trailer!
What’s Included:
Film: (1:57:18)
- 2160p / Widescreen 2.39:1
- Dolby Vision / HDR10
- Audio: French 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, French 2.0 DTS-HD Master Audio, English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio
- Subtitles: English, English SDH, Spanish
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4K UHD:
Extras:
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No bonus material
Final Thoughts:
La Femme Nikita makes its way onto 4K UHD for the first time with a solid technical presentation and beautiful SteelBook packaging that is sure to please fans. Unfortunately, the disc is still barebones, and doesn’t even include the film’s trailer. That said, the film itself is great and still holds up extremely well. It is a classic Luc Besson film that should be part of every collection, and if you don’t already own it, this is certainly the version to get.
