Classic Movie

'She murders. So she can live.'

	Cue more refreshing character development than a feature-ength episode of Monkey Dust and more rubbing out than a pre-school art exam

The plot: Nikita (Anne Parillaud) is a pontentially fit crackhead who spends her life in catatonia mucking about with her fuckwit, strung-out mates, not caring a toss whether she lives or dies. One particularly dumb-ass night she gets embroiled in the robbery of a pharmacy, avoids getting herself shot, but ends up blowing a French copper's head off and is sentenced to death by lethal injection.
Then, rather than waking up in some cotton-covered afterlife, she's held captive in a secret location where killers who are already dead are trained to kill again, but this time under scrupulous government tutelage.

So what happens? She's trained to fight like a bitch, talk like a lady and kill without emotion or remorse. Her strict tuition eventually leads her back into the real world where she remains under 24-hour surveillance by the government spook who instructed her (Tchéky Karyo) and secretly wouldn't mind giving her one. Cue more refreshing character development than a feature-ength episode of Monkey Dust and more rubbing out than a pre-school art exam.

Why's it a classic? It's a super-stylish French cinema at its best with a mesmerising performance from Parillaud at its core, always utterly believable as the complex Nikita, and Jean Reno making a late appearance as the unremitting 'Cleaner' who chucks acid on nearly-dead people and drives Mercedeses through walls. Oh, and did we mention it's got sniping in it? Sniping's cool, just ask Leon.