There was a French film Nikita made in 1990. This was later retitled La Femme Nikita for its American release. Nikita was played by Anne Parillaud.
There was a Hong Kong remake Hei Mao (Black Cat) made in 1991. The main character in this film was named Catherine (although that’s probably just in the dubbed version) and was played by Jade Leung.
There was an American remake Point of No Return made in 1993. This was retitled The Assassin in some releases. The main character in this film was named Maggie and was played by Bridget Fonda.
There was a Canadian televison series La Femme Nikita which ran from 1997 to 2001. This was retitled Nikita in some markets. Nikita was played by Peta Wilson.
I’ve seen the original Nikita, in the original French, though then it was titled L’Assassin. That was good, and the bleak ending very French. I’ve seen the American remake with Bridget Fonda. That wasn’t so good. How does this series rank compared to them? And should I be badgering any U.K. channels to get it?
ETA: oh yes, does the new series have Jean Reno in it?
Tonight’s episode was a major disappointment. I didn’t even try to count how many gaping holes there were in the plot. No subtlety in the characterizations: Percy’s doing everything short of twirling his moustache and tying damsels to the train tracks. And this episode was even short of mindless action and gratuitous lingerie scenes.
Not a major disappointment, but could have been a lot better. There’s definitely a hint of Alias with the spy vs spy thing, but I fear it’s going to be a one season wonder if things don’t pick up.
Okay, some of the things we were supposed to accept:
The bad guy hid the uranium. For some reason a GPS unit was involved. And when the GPS unit was destroyed, nobody knew how to find the uranum. Here’s a thought - ask the guy who hid it. You know - the guy you abducted so he’d give you the location of the GPS unit that’ll tell you where he hid the uranium. I guess we don’t worry about all that uranium still being out there and anyone else finding it either.
Nikita needed Alex to tell her who the target was and where he was located. Alex, by a completely seperate coincidence, finds this out when the Division brings her to that location. And in the middle of what’s supposed to be a high security area, Alex is able to call out on a phone and contact Nikita. And Nikita, who had no previous information about where this target was, happened to be so close that she’s able to rescue Alex within minutes.
Alex gives Nikita a description of one of the kidnappers - she’s a blonde woman with green eyes. Nikita then goes through some random videos of the bad guy on a public street. And she notices that in the background of one of the videos there’s a blonde woman. Obviously this must be the woman she’s looking for - what are the odds of there being two blonde women walking around somewhere on the same planet?
The terrorists break into the apartment and shoot everyone there. Except for the two people who are in the opening credits - you can’t kill them even though they work for the same agency as those other people you just killed. Besides you want them to live because they saw your face and terrorists always like to have witnesses around who can describe them. In fact, let’s leave our wounded guy behind so they can torture him for more information.
Shadownet is this incredible computer security system that controls all of the computers in the world and can find information on any computer anywhere. Except apparently inside the agency itself, where nobody has noticed that a trainee is using an agency computer to stay in regular contact with and pass classified information to the person you’ve been looking for.
Speaking of computers, Division must use some unusual hardware where everything is built in to the monitor. Because when Alex was worried about somebody seeing what she was writing, she handled it by smashing the monitor. Which apparently erases and writes over all files in the hard drive.
Disclaimer: The following is based on seeing about 5 minutes last week and 10 minutes this week, but…
That girl cannot act!! She has one facial expression and zero voice inflection. I was annoyed just for the few minutes I watched, and she’s the lead? Jeez.
I think Maggie Q does a decent job. She may not be Meryl Streep but this isn’t Sophie’s Choice either. I think the problem is that her character is mainly supposed to be grim so she spends a lot of time acting that way. But there have been a few scenes where Nikita has a lighter moment and Q can handle those as well.
Personally it’s Shane West who I consider to be underacting. He delivers all his lines in the same gravelly monotone - I keep expecting him to start singing “Bette Davis Eyes”.
You’re completely right, but you’re also overthinking things. I think the show works better if you turn that logic center of your brain down a few notches and just view it as a mindless sexy action show.
I agree in general. Most fictional works require some willing suspension of disbelief. But it’s possible for a work to abuse the privilege - to be so implausible that it forces you to see the flaws. And this episode was past that line for me.
I don’t think this is threadshitting. The OP “Anyone watching Nikita?” wasn’t asking for only fan and rave reviews, he seemed to want opinions.
Personally, even in those hot outfits, she was more or less just “ok” to me in the pics and previews, certainly not the super-hottie they were trying to show. I have not yet seen the show, but I’ll give it a try.
Well, it wasn’t really a high security area. Michael makes a big deal out of it not being their safe house. Still, calling out was kinda risky - Burkoff wasn’t monitoring it just on principle? As for the timing, it runs like 24 - everything in LA is 15 minutes apart. Must be the same in Washington DC.
I think part of the tell was the way she was leaving the courthouse after the reveal that it was Michael playing the part of the criminal.
Yeah, they should have shot Michael at least. The girl I could see them ignoring - she was unarmed and they didn’t know she was a junior operative, for all they knew she was a call girl in the wrong place at the wrong time. They shot the security, but didn’t have a real reason to shoot her. Though pulling up her mask at the scene was stupid.
Maybe they figured they accomplished their objective, get out before reinforcements arrive?
Ahh, but Nikita is so good she has devised a backdoor through Shadownet. Yeah, that’s it.
Maybe she just had to get the screen cleared so they wouldn’t see what she was up to. They didn’t bother to look, she was “just practicing the break in stuff like Burkoff said”. But if it had been on the screen, it would have caught attention. Reboot the machine later.
Another weak episode. Implausible story with big plotholes (How did the reporter get out from under the murder set-up? It’s not like she found any evidence to exonerate herself or could produce the real killers.) Didn’t care too much because I didn’t like the reporter much anyway - she played the part too perky, like Mary Richards in an episode of The X-Files.
I’ve realized that the only thing I like about this show is Maggie Q herself. I’d be happy if she got out of this show and got cast in something better.
I was going to give up after this episode, but next week’s flashback episode looks like it might be interesting. So I might give the show one more week (although I’ll be out of town next week so maybe not).
