A 'Point' worth making

A dark-haired, dirty, rude, brutal drug-addicted murderer. A red-haired, clean, classy, and efficient assassin. Two completely different personalities--one woman's transformation. In this solid remake of the 1990 French hit La Femme Nikita, what was intended as a mere cosmetic transformation becomes a spiritual journey that sends one woman past the Point of No Return.

Bridget Fonda plays Maggie, an antisocial, murderous drug addict sentenced to die by lethal injection. But instead of dying, she gets a last-minute reprieve from a shady governmental agency who presents Maggie with a choice: life as a high-profile assassin or "a bullet in the brain." Transformed into Claudia Doran, computer programmer; codename Nina, hired killer, Maggie moves to Venice Beach and falls in love with photographer J.P. (Dermot Mulroney), tearing Maggie between the life she wants--a quiet
existence with her love--and the life she wants to escape--the dirty occupation that keeps her alive.

Point is a virtual scene-by-scene translation of the highly popular and entertaining La Femme Nikita, but the two films are successes in their own distinct terms. While Nikita was more of a psychological study with a number of intense action sequences, Point, while telling the same story, is more of an intense action film with a number of psychological dimensions not normally found in such films. In addition to the well-staged action sequences is a moving, convincing story of a woman forever forced to pay for her past crimes, a person once turned on by killing but now repulsed by it. Although she starts the film as a punk, the audience learns to care for her as she gradually evolves from junkie to sophisticate onscreen. The main reason for the story's success is the vibrant performance by Fonda. Only an actress of great versatility can convincingly play both an incredibly unsympathetic character and a likable heroine, and depict the character's transition from the former to the latter just as convincingly; like her Nikita predecessor Anne Parillaud, Fonda proves to be up to the task.

While Luc Besson's original screenplay for Nikita and the adaptation by Robert Getchell and Alexandra Seros are generally identical, the new version does take some new directions, and a few of them are inferior to the original's turn of events. Writer-director Besson's film does a handful of things better than Point, in particular a harrowing scene involving hitman Victor the Cleaner (Harvey Keitel in Point), the inclusion of a powerful emotional scene between Nikita and her love not found in the new film, and the original does not have a somewhat corny "falling in love" montage found in Point. But most of the new version's swerves from the original course work, boasting a more satisfying action climax and a more powerfully executed--but identical--conclusion.

Point of No Return is a Hollywood rarity: a remake faithful to the film upon which it is based and an intelligent, thrilling action film with a real story and impressive acting.