Point of No Return
            
Director: John Badham
Year: 1993
Rating: 5.5
This is a flabby remake of the 1990 La Femme Nikita though it follows it quite closely but still manages to lose much of the excitement and tension along the way. The pacing is too slow and it doesn't have the same intensity or amount of action. Or at least as I best recall La Femme Nikita from seeing it over 30-years ago. I had the poster on my wall, so I either liked the film or liked the poster. A French poster on my bedroom wall back then gave me a certain cachet. In between La Femme Nikita and this, Hong Kong managed to slip in an unofficial remake with the 1991 Black Cat. Black Cat definitely gives a bigger jolt than this one does. This is directed by John Badham and he just seems to hold back. There needed to be at least two more action set-pieces - hell we get more love-making set-pieces than we do action ones. Badham, you had a female assassin in your film, not a woman in love.

 

Everyone must know the basic plot by now - if not from these three films, then from the two TV series based on the character. Maggie (Bridget Fonda) is a drug addict who goes along with her low-life gang (Michael Rappaport is one of them) to rob a pharmacy and the owner (Geoffrey Lewis) and the rest of the gang are killed. She shoots a cop through his chin. Off to the death chamber she goes, but an agency is looking for a young female killer and think she has the makings of a good one. Bob (Gabriel Byrne) is her handler and becomes attached to her. The great Anne Bancroft as Amanda does her makeover and she is as spotless and polite as a Duchess in no time. Then the dinner. She passes with bloody colors. She graduates but there is no graduation gown or photo.

 

They send her to live in Venice Beach looking out on the ocean to lay low until she hears the codeword Nina over the phone. Nina being Nina Simone and the soundtrack through the film. In the time it takes most of us to drink a milkshake, she has picked up a boyfriend J.P. (Dermot Mulroney) and they bond over ravioli and sex. Lots of sex. They are having sex every time the call comes in. Sorry honey, time to go kill someone - finish without me. But damn, she is soft inside - and in no time she is whining to Bob that she wants out. And her boyfriend is so damn clingy and tiresome. I was hoping he would be a target. You are banging Briget Fonda, stop asking her questions about her childhood. Stop moping because she has no friends. Anyway, this is a job you don't walk away from. She knows that. Best part of the film is Harvey Keitel as the Cleaner. Cleaners in the assassin business are always the coolest. It was Jean Reno in La Femme Nikita. I think I liked this much more when I saw this way back but compared to today's female assassin films it is a wet paper bag of mush.