More like 'No Point in Returning'

No doubt about it: the 1990's gave us some bad Hollywood remakes of French films (anyone remember 'My father the Hero?'). But no remake I have ever seen has completely lost the whole spirit of the original in such a way as POINT OF NO RETURN.

It's a reworking of Luc Besson's excellent NIKITA, which was a stylishly-directed and clever crime thriller about a nihilistic young woman who kills a cop and then avoids the gas chamber by becoming a government assassin, but realises that her new life strips her of her humanity. It was a brooding, intense and often uniquely witty film with an ambiguous ending.

However, this American version, directed by John "Bland" Badham, is merely a slick thriller about a chick with a gun, and it features actors who are either dull or miscast, or both, and it completely forsakes the whole tone by fatally altering some key scenes. **MINI-SPOILER** One single moment about halfway through illustrates how the film-makers don't even seem to have understood Besson's intentions at all: Bridget Fonda's character, Maggie, is called on her first assignment after months of living peacefully in her new identity. She must go to a hotel and deliver a tray to the room of a government enemy.

In NIKITA, Anne Parillaud arrives at the door, the guards take her tray (which has been installed with a bugging device), and she is sent home. Having expected a cold-hearted murder, she leaps with joy at home, realising that she may not have to do such heavy-duty work after all. As misled as she is, it's a nice moment.

But in Badham's film, Fonda is walking away from the hotel after delivering the tray and BOOOM!!! An entire floor of the building explodes in flames! Yes Badham, you just had to throw in an explosion, didn't you? That changed the whole point of the scene! Maybe it was the studio who insisted on this change. I guess Besson was just too subtle.

In fairness to Bridget Fonda, she isn't bad in the lead role, and boy does she look good. It's not her fault that the film fails. POINT OF NO RETURN is a clinically made action thriller which pales next to the stylish classic that it so badly clones.