The girl who became a weapon
There is no source novel. No graphic novel. No true crime case file. Luc Besson wrote Nikita from scratch in 1990, and the film he made that year became one of the most imitated, remade, and rebooted action properties in cinema history.
The premise is elemental: a young woman with nothing to lose gets caught in a violent crime, is sentenced to death by the state, and then offered a deal. Fake her death. Train as a government assassin. Disappear into a new identity. The story works because it sits at the intersection of a spy thriller and a character study, and because Besson cast Anne Parillaud in the lead. She won the César Award for Best Actress for it.
Within three years, Hollywood had produced an English-language remake. Hong Kong had produced its own version. By the end of the 1990s, there was an American cable television series running for four seasons. By 2010, a second TV series had arrived. The franchise has never quite stopped moving, which is itself a kind of tribute to the original idea.
Every Version of Nikita
The original film and every official remake and adaptation in the catalog
Nikita Through the Years
- 1990Luc Besson's original Nikita
- 1993Hollywood remake: Point of No Return (Bridget Fonda) and a Hong Kong version: Black Cat (Jade Leung)
- 1997USA Network series begins, runs to 2001 La Femme Nikita
- 2010CW reboot series begins, runs to 2013 Nikita
The definitive version is still the 1990 original
Anne Parillaud's performance is the reason every version that followed exists. The 1990 film works not because of the action sequences but because of the exhaustion and grief underneath them. Besson keeps the story small: a woman trapped between the person she was and the person the state needs her to be. No remake has matched that emotional compression. The CW series is entertaining television. The Hollywood remake is professionally made. Neither has the original's weight.
The underrated one: La Femme Nikita (1997)
La Femme Nikita ran four seasons on USA Network and developed the mythology into something the films never had room for: a slow, grinding picture of what it costs to live inside a black-ops program indefinitely. Peta Wilson's Nikita and Roy Dupuis's Michael have the best sustained chemistry of any version of this story. The show was cancelled, revived by fan campaign, and cancelled again. It is underseen now because it aired before streaming culture made long-form cult television easy to find. That is your reason to seek it out.
The Besson sequel nobody expected: Anna (2019)
Besson returned to the same story in 2019 with Anna: a beautiful young woman from a dead end, recruited into state violence, given a new identity, trying to find a way out. The plotting is more convoluted than Nikita and the ending is too neat, but Sasha Luss carries it with a stillness that echoes Parillaud. Watch it as a companion piece to the original rather than as a franchise entry. Besson clearly could not let the template go.
If you love Nikita: women who operate in the dark
Films and series about women trained, coerced, or shaped into instruments of violence
If you love Nikita: Luc Besson's world
Other films from the same director and the action-cinema universe he built
If you love Nikita: state-made killers and the cost of that bargain
Spy thrillers and action stories where the protagonist's loyalties and identity are the real subject
Assassins, Spies and Besson Action
Assassins & Hitmen
Explore the Assassins & Hitmen guide →She was given a name, a skill set, and a mission. They forgot to take away the part of her that wanted something else.The premise that has driven every version since 1990