However, she wakes up in a dingy facility only to be told that she has "died" and her choice is to work for the government or end up in the coffin her family already thinks she inhabits. Her trainer and mentor, Bob (Tcheky Karyo) is a handsome but cruel man and her training will not be easy. She puts up a hell of a fight, however, and he eventually grooms her into a lovely and deadly young woman.
When she finally gets a break from the facility some three years after her incarceration, it is to celebrate her 23rd birthday and she believes she is going to dinner with Bob. As it turns out, her gift is a gun and Bob tells her to assasinate a VIP eating at the resturant. She gets her man, but things go horribly wrong when she is purposefully given incorrect intel, but she still manages to get back to the facility, although very upset and angry. She is then released and told to enjoy her life because she passed her test, but that she will be contacted to perform jobs using the code Josephine.
She soon gets an apartment and has a cover "job" as a nurse at the local hospital and meets a charming grocery clerk named Marco (Jean-Hugues Anglade). They soon fall in love and everything seems great, until the phone rings and she hears the word she has dreaded, "Josephine." Marco, anxious to know more about his mysterious love, is thrilled when "Uncle Bob" comes over for a visit and gives the lovebirds free tickets for a trip to Venice. Nikita, now going by the name Marie, is devastated to realize Bob is playing more head games and she has another kill awaiting her. The final straw is a job where she needs to retrieve intel from an embassy and no one is supposed to die, but things go awry and a "cleaner" is called in, Victor (Jean Reno), who ends up killing everyone around him except for Nikita. Nikita resigns herself to never being able to escape this life while still retaining her relationship with Marco.
While the movie is fatalistic in nature, the cinematography is brilliant and really benefits from the cleanup it received in its high-def transfer to Blu-ray. Bullets that seem to whizz by you on your surround sound system only serve to further immerse you in Nikita's tragic and action-packed world. One word to the wise, this movie is entirely in French, so you will have to watch it with subtitles, unless you speak French, of course. But it is completely worth the effort. Sadly, this release is super-lean on special features, sporting only BD Live and a handful of previews. But it still looks really sweet and is a fantastic example of Luc Besson's work, so if you haven't yet added La Femme Nikita to your movie collection, snap it up now.
