LA FEMME NIKITA (Original)

I first saw this movie upon it’s release, probably by myself, at the Uptown Theatre in Minneapolis in 9th grade. Pre-riot grrrl revelation/punk rock newbie portion of my life, but immediately prior to that cusp. I know I saw it at least once and I was evangelical about it to all three of my friends. Junkie punk rock (but only in the French pop movie sense, she has a Meatloaf poster, so really, she’s not at all) bad girl becomes a lethal weapon for the French government, but only after shooting a cop point blank and stabbing another one through the palm with a Bic pen after he slaps her. Could there be anything tougher, or bad-asser-er than that and then, later, her in a body-con dress having a handgun bonanza while some beefy bodygaurds shoot RPGs at her indoors?

I really thought not. I think perhaps my idea of feminist lib action heroine was a bit under-developed and I missed the entire storyline of her being LOCKED INSIDE A COP RUN TRAINING COMPOUND FOR THREE YEARS UNTIL SHE LEARNS HOW TO DRESS LIKE A SEXY GAL AND BE AN EXPERT WORD PROCESSOR AND ALSO LIVE IN A CELL… and love it! The other night, laying in bed, I convinced Matt to let me dial this one up on the Netflix instant, with the promise of “You’ll love it!”. I could hardly tolerate it, and this was my favorite movie at another point in my life. The same could be said of Fletch which I can make it through almost once a year. La Femme Nikita is really eightiesterrible™–the plinking droplet of water effect on the super MIDI’d out soundtrack, Nikita’s a-ha moment of computer genius being what appears to be a MacPaint program, a super hot model babe wordlessly seducing a nearly ugly cashier dude (all french films) on a painters tarp, a montage of a romantic trip to Venice that includes our quirky heroine mugging it up in a man’s hat. It’s almost funny but then it’s not. I could not even finish it, I felt retroactively embarrassed for my 9th grade self, spending $12 in babysitting savings to see this twice.