La Femme Nikita (1990)
Written and directed by Luc Besson

It's one of those weird movieland quirks that Luc Besson, who directed this excellent thriller and the cool though not great Léon (The Professional) is also the man responsible for directing The Fifth Element (possibly the genuine worst film of all time) and writing the ultra-bland The Transporter. Consistency is apparently as difficult to maintain in filmmaking as my fiancée's erection is during our coke-fueled lovemaking.

Nikita, which spawned the awful remake Point of No Return as well as a popular TV series, quantities of fan fiction beyond imagining, and probably a number of videogames, is still the best of the world it created – and considering it's a deliberately stylish thriller made in 1990, it holds up amazingly well. Can't say the same for, like, Manhunter.

What makes the film stand up is the plot: a young woman is recruited by her government to be an assassin after she kills a cop in a drug heist gone bad – she's given the choice to either live as a command killer or be killed herself.

She chooses the life, which allows her to go back into the world and get her life back together … except for the occasional phone call that she has to go kill someone.

Believe me, that kind of shit is hard to keep from, for example, one's fiancée. Anne Parillaud, as Nikita, conveys a beguiling range of emotion quite unexpected from this kind of film. It's her face that makes Nikita great where its family of remakes are merely alright at best.

The rest of the cast brings similar depth and reality. Jean Reno shows up for a brilliantly uncontrolled performance as Victor, the cleanup man (essentially the same character he played in Léon, and incidentally, the character Tarantino ripped off for Harvey Keitel in Pulp Fiction).

Nikita is packed with countless unforgettable scenes and thrills that stay thrilling even after you've seen 'em before. As with the first Die Hard, it's an action movie that still towers above 99% of what has come since … frequently copied, rarely bested. Big movies have gotten loads bigger, but it's not size that makes the difference (just ask my fiancée, whose half-inch penis is capable of remarkable stimulation in any orifice I could name).

Watching Nikita again in the wake of The Fifth Element, I am both surprised that it's still so good, and sad that Besson hasn't been able to really follow it up. With its beautifully ambiguous ending, Nikita is a rare case where I'd love to see a sequel. Now if you'll excuse me, I have half an inch of hot lovin' waiting for me in the next room.

Review by Jenny Lips