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la femme NIKITA 4K          review by Bobby Blakey

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Throughout his career director Luc Besson has delivered some great films including Leon: The Profesional, The Fifth Element, the underrated Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets and more recently DogMan. Back in 1990 he unleashed his film la Femme NIKITA that spawned a TV series and the American remake Point of No Return. The film stars Anne Parillaud, Jean Hugues Anglade, Tcheky Karyo and Jean Reno and is getting the 4K treatment for the first time. 

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la femme NIKITA follows a vicious street punk turned sexy, sophisticated and lethally dangerous assassin who was rescued from death row by a top-secret agency and slowly transformed from a cop-killing junkie into a cold-blooded bombshell with a license to kill. But when she begins the deadliest mission of her career, only to fall for a man who knows nothing of her true identity, Nikita discovers that in the dark and ruthless world of espionage, the greatest casualty of all...is true love.

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I love Besson and just about everything he has been involved with as both writer and director. To be honest I was never that big of a fan of this one, but still enjoyed it. Heading into this new release, I realized I haven’t revisited this film since its original release and was excited to see if it not only holds up but pulls me in more this time around.

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Diving back in I can say that I didn’t remember any of this film and questioned if I had ever seen it all the way through at all. Right out the gate it brings some fun old school action and pulled me in ready for a great time. Sadly, while the movie is still good it slows down so much through most of it that it loses its steam for most of its run. It takes time setting everything up and clearly no rushing to get us there, but after awhile I found myself just eager to get it moving.

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The action is pretty few and far between, especially for the Besson we are used to, but what is here is well executed. I did enjoy the film a bit more than I remember but still doesn’t fully connect with me for some reason. At the same time, I think it is iconic in both the action genre and Besson’s filmography and glad this new release will get it out there to new audiences. One cool aspect of the film is the connection to Leon starring Jean Reno who also appears in this film although as a different character. When watching it see if you can spot the connection.

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Whether you are an old school fan or new to the experience grab your copy of la femme NIKITA when it hits limited edition 4K steelbook available now from Sony Home Entertainment.  

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