DVDfever.co.uk - Nikita Blu-ray reviewDVDfever.co.uk - Charts, News and Reviews of Blu-rays, DVDs, Games, CDs, Hardware, Laserdiscs, Cinema Films & more
(Angel-A, Arthur and the Invisibles, Arthur and the Revenge of Maltazard, Arthur and the Two Worlds War, Atlantis, The Big Blue, The Fifth Element, The Last Combat, Leon, The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc, Nikita, Subway)
Producer:
Patrice Ledoux
Screenplay:
Luc Besson
Music:
Eric Serra
Cast :
Nikita: Anne Parillaud
Bob: Tchéky Karyo
Marco: Jean-Hugues Anglade
Amanda: Jeanne Moreau
Victor the cleaner: Jean Reno
Nikita 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 (Anna 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), 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), 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.
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 2.35:1 anamorphic vision, whether it's the close-ups of any of the key cast's faces or the glorious Paris and
Venice locations. Like the
Subway release, there's occasionally some shimmering
that's mostly notable in the black sections of the image, while at other times it just looks a rather hazy print. It
doesn't happen as often as in Subway but it does make me wonder why it's there.
For the record, I'm watching on a Panasonic 37" Plasma screen via a Samsung BD-P1500 Blu-ray player.
The sound is in Dolby Digital 2.0 and sounds great for the Eric Serra's intense soundtrack, while dialogue and ambience
are also fine, but it's a shame there's no DTS 5.1 mix which would've been perfect for the kitchen shootout.
The extras are as follows:
The Making of Nikita (20:37):
Like most of the featurettes here, this was filmed in 2003 and is presented in 4:3 with letterboxed 2.35:1 film clips and features chat
from key cast and crew members - in this case talking about the how the filming panned out for each
of them. The only one I'm surprised we don't get any input from is Besson, himself. Aside from that, it's a fairly
standard supplmental. As for Anne Parillaud, as she ages she's looking hotter than ever.
Karyo on Besson (0:26):
Yes, I've not gone mad - this extra really did only last 26 seconds, while he praises Besson some more. And it took
me longer to type this bit than he did to say it.
The Sound of Nikita (4:48):
A few minutes, mainly from Eric Serra, about the soundtrack and how he ensures it always applies to the moment and
the feelings exhibited by the characters.
The Bedroom (0:33):
Er... she has different bedrooms throughout the film.
The Training Room (0:33):
This has nothing to do with the training room where she practiced self-defence, it's just random clips of the film
stuck together. How odd.
The Vanity Room (0:33):
She puts on a bit of make-up, for about 5 seconds of this brief clip-fest. The end. How pointless are these tiny segments?
Trailer (2:22):
In anamorphic 2.35:1.
The menu mixes footage from the film with a small portion of the thumping action music.
There are English subtitles but the Chaptering is, again for Optimum, appalling with just 12 over the
118-minute running time.
Nikita is a fantastic film and a must-see, but while the Blu-ray image looks better than a DVD, it still could
be improved, as mentioned earlier, both the extras and the lack of a DTS 5.1 soundtrack are quite a let-down.
As of April 2009, Blu-rays and DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TH-37PX80B
37" Plasma TV with a Sony BDP-1500 Blu-ray player and played through a Yamaha DSP-AX820 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Jan 2011: Intel Quad Core Dell XPS 8100, i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80Ghz, 8Gb RAM, nVidia GeForce GTS 240, Windows 7
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
Blu-ray: 
Nikita hasn't had a great start in life...
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 2.35:1 anamorphic vision, whether it's the close-ups of any of the key cast's faces or the glorious Paris and
Venice locations. Like the
