In 1990, Luc Besson (The Professional, The Fifth Element) released a film, Nikita, in France. When it came to the U.S. the next year, the film was billed La Femme Nikita. A couple of years later, American director John Badham (Stakeout, Bird on a Wire) took a turn at the same story, and in 1993 released an American remake, Point of No Return. And something tells me you can already tell where this is going, based on the other credits of the two directors, if nothing else. To further illustrate the situation, the French film stars French actress Anne Parillaud, while the American one stars Bridget Fonda.

These two films are a perfect illustration of how storyline isn't everything. They share the same storyline, and Point of No Return is, for the most part, a scene-by-scene remake of La Femme Nikita. And yet Point of No Return is a cheesy, ridiculous movie, and La Femme Nikita is an absolute classic.

The basic plot line is as follows: a young woman shoots a police officer or officers while participating in a drug robbery. She is convicted and her death (suicide in the French version, execution in the American--what does that tell you?) is faked by some secret facet of the government, who then give her the choice to work for them as an assassin or to die for real. Choosing the former, she enters training. Some time later, she's released from the facility and goes into the real world, where she assumes a fake identity, moves into a shabby apartment, and falls in love. After falling in love, it becomes more difficult for her to do her assassin work, and she tries to get out. Then comes the typical "one last big job," which happens and goes horribly awry, but somehow she remains alive and escapes, leaving both assassin work and lover boy behind.

What really makes La Femme Nikita such a better movie than Point of No Return, though, is that everything that is arty and surreal and strange about La Femme Nikita turns into something cheese ball in Point of No Return. Though Badham tried to imitate Besson shot for shot in much of the film, Besson gets it and Badham just doesn't. This leaves the viewer (at least this viewer) with the feeling that while Nikita is a film about a female assassin, Point of No Return is a film making fun of female assassins.

That being said, neither one of these movies is all that good from the perspective of heroine content. Both films have exactly one really excellent woman assassin scene, and the scene is well played in both films. (But Parillaud is a much more convincing ass-kicker than Fonda is. To begin with, while both women probably worked out for their roles, Parillaud is convincingly muscled and her short skirt rides up legs that look like they've spent some time kickboxing. Fonda is mainly just skinny. She also looks far more comfortable than Fonda with a weapon.) The remainder of the films, though, is taken up with a lot of instruction on how to use one's feminine wiles (yuck) and a lot of soul-searching about whether being an assassin is appropriate for someone who is in love. Very little time in either film is spent on the main character's actual potential to kick ass, and the ass kicking that is done is under strict male supervision. There's nothing revolutionary about it, and honestly I don't know what people are thinking when they trumpet Nikita as a great women's action movie. It's barely an action movie at all.

In the end, I give La Femme Nikita two stars, mainly for Parillaud's performance, which I did quite enjoy. Point of No Return gets one, because really there isn't much good about it. While it's not, for the most part, offensive, it's nothing I'd go out of my way to watch, either.