LA FEMME NIKITA (1990) (SPHE Limited Edition Steelbook 4K Ultra HD)

LA FEMME NIKITA (1990)

Limited Edition Steelbook 

4K Ultra HD

Label: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment 

Region Code: Region-Free 

Rating: R

Duration: 117 Minutes 18 Seconds 

Audio: French DTS-HD MA 2.0 Stereo and 5.1 Surround, English DTS-HD MA 5.1 Surround with Optional English Subtitles 

Video: Dolby Vision (HDR10) 2160p Ultra HD Widescreen (2.35:1) 

Director: Luc Besson 

Cast: Anne Parillaud, Jeanne Moreau, Jean Reno

La Femme Nikita (1990) is from director Luc Besson (The Fifth Element), opens with a gang of junkies breaking into a drugstore owned by one of their friends which ends in a shootout with police, everyone dies except for the nihilistic Nikita (Anne Parillaud, Innocent Blood), who while high on drugs cold-bloodedly murders a cop by shooting him point blank in the face, after which she is arrested and sentenced to death. Her doomed fate changes unexpectedly when a secret government agency known as "The Centre" fakes her death by suicide in prison, government spook Bob (Tchéky Karo, A Very Long Engagement) shows up and tells her she is being a given a second chance at life, offering her the choice of becoming an state-sponsored assassin or actually taking a spot in her empty grave. Reluctantly taking the former option she begins her training in at a secret facility, where over the course of three years she is turned from a near-feral, drug-addled, nihilistic teenager into a sexy, sophisticated and lethal assassin; trained in computer skills, martial arts and all manner of firearms, as well as some beauty techniques from charm school marm (Jeanne Moreau, The Train) to transform her from a feral, hot mess into a truly stunning looking woman.  

Graduating from The Centre she embarks on her first mission, taking out a foreign diplomat inside a crowded restaurant, and escaping from a small but well-armed detachment of bodyguards. From this we get a terrifically staged series of electric carnage chock full of style and visceral action. After barely surviving her initial mission she is released from The Center and is sent to Paris as a sleeper agent under the alias Marie. There she meets grocery clerk Marco (Jean-Hugues Anglade, Killing Zoe), falling in love, but eventually her secretive missions threaten her newfound happiness. 

When Marco becomes curious about her lack of friends and family she invites Bob aka "Uncle Bob" over for a dinner, where he gifts the couple with tickets to Venice, which seems like a wonderful gift, until it turns out to be an excuse to put her in place for another assassination mission, establishing that nothing is given for free from her handler Bob or The Centre. A later mission back in Paris involves  stealing documents from an embassy, but when it goes all sorts of wrong The Centre sending "The Cleaner", a vicious assassin named Vincent (Jean Reno, Léon: The Professional) who has an itchy trigger finger and seems to cause more chaos than actual clean-up, even killing one of their own agents in the process. After the botched mission the mounting pressure of balancing her love life with Marco and secretive assassin lifestyle become too much to handle, and she might have to give up everything she loves and knows to get away from it all. 

I first saw La Femme Nikita when it hit the local arthouse theater when I was a teen, it coincided with a thee year long tear when I was first discovering foreign cinema back in Ithaca, NY at Cinemapolis and Fall Creek Pictures, where I first saw Cinema Paradiso (1988), The Double Life of Veronique (1991), Toto Le Hero (1991), Mediterraneo (1991), Delicatessen (1991), an d Like Water For Chocolate (1992). It was such an exciting time for film discovery for me, and this flick in particular was electric, sexy and stylish, it set my neurons on fire when I first saw it at the theater, the story of a cop-murdering junkie transformed into a secret government assassin is absolutely breathtaking. The training montages that span a couple of years are fantastic, and who she finally aces her exit test and becomes a sleeper agent in Paris she finds love by way of the very likable grocer-guy Marco, but the chemistry between herself and her handler Bob is hot stuff, you can feel the pent-up attraction in every shared scene, and when the violent-thriller action kick-in it really gets your pulse racing. One of the highlights for me other than seeing Parillaud's turn from a feral cop-killing junkie to seductive, sophisticated and deadly state-sponsored assassin, is seeing Jean Reno (Godzilla) as the unhinged "cleaner", his character Vincent seems to be the inspiration for the character of the NYC in Besson's follow-up flick Léon: The Professional, they look near exactly the same. 

La Femme Nikita is still a tremendously entertaining violent-thriller, anchored by a top-notch turn from Parillaud who excels from the shocking opening right-up till the end, I love how it looks and sounds, the SteelBook packaging is cool, I only wish we had some new extras (any extras!) to fill it out, otherwise well-worth the upgrade! 

Audio/Video: La Femme Nikita (1990) arrives on 4K UHD in 2160p Ultra HD framed in 2.39:1 widescreen. Advertised as restored from the original camera negative and presented in 4K resolution with Dolby Vision (HDR 10 compatible). This looks phenomenal, quite a nice upgrade over the previous Blu-ray, the source looks terrific with nary a flaw, the 4K resolution showcases fantastic fine detail and pleasing textures in the close-ups, grain is nicely resolved, and the colors look wonderful, especially with the punched-up Dolby Vision (HDR compatible)  primaries, the opening scenes in the drugstore bathed in saturated blue and reds looks wonderful. Elsewhere skin tones are quite pleasing, the scenes of the couple on vacation in Venice are splashed with vivid scenes of color that sizzle, and black levels are deep and inky. 

No Dolby Atmos upgrade for La Femme Nikita, but we do get an French language DTS-HD MA 2.0 stereo and 5.1 surround, as well as English-dub DTS-HD MA 5.1 with optional English subtitles. The French 5.1 is the way to go here, the score by Éric Serra (Lucy) comes through wonderfully, sounding quite full and with a lot of depth to it with a solid low-end, plus the sounds of gunfire and the physical action is deep-bodied, and the French dialogue is never problematic. The anemic English DTS-HD MA 5.1 is much less impressive, the dub is atrocious, and the fidelity is quite poor in comparison to either French audio track.  

Onto the extras... what extras? That's right, just like the previous 2008 Sony Blu-ray this is a barebones release which is a true shame. Not sure if Besson has issues with the film, it's producers, or what, but this is a flick that has always been short changed when it came to the extras. Of all it's releases the only one of that I am aware has any extras, at least here in the U.S., is the 2004 MGM Special Edition DVD that had a trio of brief featurettes and galleries, non of which are carried over here, so if you own that DVD hang onto it if you're a bonus junk junkie. 

The single-disc 4K UHD arrives with attractive limited edition matte-finish SteelBook packaging featuring the key artwork from the movie poster that wraps around the front and back. OIn the inside is a scene from the film. There is no accompanying Blu-ray or digital redemption code on this edition, just the 4K UHD disc. 

Special Features: 

- None

Buy it!

Amazon