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Nikita is out now in a 4K Steelbook, which is great news for us, but for the lady, herself, she hasn’t had a great start in life…
Once a drug addict, she’s sent to jail after a failed pharmacy robbery results in her blowing the head off a cop.
And so begins the story of Nikita (Anne Parillaud). She isn’t someone you can just slap with an asbo and hope everything will be alright – she requires specialist treatment, aka life imprisonment with a 30-year minimum term. And that’s just the good news she’s been given. The bad news is that they’ve changed their minds and, instead, they’re going to give her a fatal injection. D’oh!
Well, not quite, since if they really did that then we’d have a very short film. Hence, Nikita wakes up in an all-white room and in enters a man who goes by the name of Uncle Bob (Tchéky Karyo – Baptiste), who tells her that she’s not actually in heaven, but is alive and legally dead, at which point he shows her pictures of her funeral. She has a chance to be reformed and turned into an assassin, working on behalf of the government. If she turns them down, then she really will end up in that plot of land…
But it’s not all work, work, work. After a prolonged bout of training, and a brief cameo from Jeanne Moreau as Amanda – who just helps give Nikita a bit of style in the wig department (and it’s a fairly pointless role to boot), 3 years on she’s treated to a birthday dinner out of the facility, which is the first time in a long time that she’s seen daylight. Except, part-way through dinner, there’s a catch: this is actually her first proper assignment and she has to assassinate someone and then escape through the kitchen – a classic movie scene.
Halfway through the film, she gets out and back into society, with aspirations to be a normal human being for the first time. She even manages to get a boyfriend, Marco (Jean-Hugues Anglade – Braquo), but one day, business comes a-calling…
Overall, Nikita is bloody marvellous film and another of Luc Besson’s triumphs and also has a great cameo from Jean Reno as Victor, the cleaner (aka, also a professional assassin), a role he effectively continued four years later in the titular role of Leon.
There’s only one thing wrong with this film, though: 3 years later it spawned the dire Hollywood remake, Point of No Return, aka The Assassin, starring Bridget Fonda and directed by John Badham.
The film, as it always has been when being presented correctly, is 2.35:1. It’s in 2160p high definition, and for the most part, the picture is nicely detailed throughout and reflects well Luc Besson’s sharp eye for direction, filling the image with his anamorphic vision, whether it’s the close-ups of any of the key cast’s faces or the glorious Paris and Venice locations.
Bear with the film during the opening credits and part of the scene, since like a lot of movies from several decades ago which were shot on film, the print’s a little soft, but it’s something that’s happened over time, but I won’t mark the release down for it because it’s a well-worn thing.
Oddly, the main menu is silent, and with clips from the film within, but the French audio is Dolby Digital 5.0 only, with German being 5.1. How come the original language gets shortchanged?
The extras on the 4K Blu-ray disc (and regular Blu-ray denoted “Feature + Bonus”) are as follows:
- At The Heart Of Nikita (24:58): Definied as a making-of, this is a series of behind-the-scenes images and footage, without any context between them. It’s interesting to watch, such as seeing the late, great Jeanne Moreau going through her script, before walking onto the set for a scene, but it doesn’t really tell you a great deal.
- Nikita Tour (13:36): This is a shorter piece, showing us a mix of things like people in a cinema queue in 1990 waiting to see the film, and footage of a premiere with Luc Besson coming onstage to introduce a very brief Q&A with some of the cast.
Additionally, the Blu-ray disc marked “Bonus” is a series of new interviews for 2024 with Anne Parillaud (41:54), Tcheky Karyo (32:09), Jean-Hugues Anglade (23:17), assistant director Christophe Vassort (14:04) and restoration supervisor Andre Labbouz (9:03), with each containing an additional chapter roughly halfway through.
So, quite a bit more than the Blu-ray from 2009.
Nikita is out now on 4K Blu-ray Steelbook, as well as the 2009 releases on Blu-ray and DVD.
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FILM CONTENT PICTURE QUALITY SOUND QUALITY EXTRAS |
10 10 10 6 |
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OVERALL |
9 |
Cert: 
Running time: 117 minutes
Year: 1990
Chapters: 12
Cat.No: OPTUSB4596A
Distributor: Studiocanal
Released: September 23rd 2024
Picture: 2160p High Definition
Language: French, German
Audio: French: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.0 (48kHz, 24-bit), German DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
Widescreen: 2.35:1 (ARRIRAW (2.8K, 3.4K))
Subtitles: English SDH
Disc Format: BD100
Director: Luc Besson
Producer: Patrice Ledoux
Screenplay: Luc Besson
Music: Eric Serra
Cast:
Nikita: Anne Parillaud
Bob: Tcheky Karyo
Marco: Jean-Hugues Anglade
Victor the Cleaner: Jean Reno
Amande: Jeanne Moreau
Rico: Marc Duret
Coyotte: Patrick Fontana
Zap: Alain Lathière
Punk: Laura Chéron
Pharmacist: Jacques Boudet
Pharmacist’s wife: Helene Aligier
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.