Nikita (5 Stars)

I'll start to discuss the film in a moment. First of all some general rambling. I assume most of my readers have noticed a change in my blog in the last week. I finally managed to persuade a friend, Kaylena, to write reviews for me as a "guest writer". It seems like I've created a monster. She has practically hijacked my blog. She's writing five times as many posts as me. But I don't care. Her posts are informative and entertaining. She's bringing fresh wind into my blog. The films I watch are a mixed bag, from the 1940's to today, with the majority being films from the 1980's and 1990's. Kaylena is reviewing almost exclusively modern films from the last two years. I hope my readers will enjoy her posts as much as they do mine, and more than that I hope that it will encourage others to contribute posts as well.

Now to the film. It was made in 1990 by Luc Besson, who both wrote and directed the film. The film has spawned two television series, "La Femme Nikita" (1997-2001) and "Nikita" (2010 to present). I watched and enjoyed "La Femme Nikita" when it was first broadcast. I haven't seen the new series yet. Today was the first time I watched the film. And I wish I hadn't waited so long. It's amazing.

The film and the first TV series don't deal with the same character. The film takes place in France. The TV series is set in America and just borrows the concept. The plot: A 19-year-old girl is in a gang that robs a pharmacy. After a shootout with the police she is the only surviving gang member. She is sentenced to life imprisonment on multiple counts of murder. Someone who works for the government sees potential in her. Her death by suicide is faked and she's transferred to a shady organisation where she's trained to "do something for her country". The first half of the film deals with her training to be a professional killer. The second half shows her being sent on missions to assassinate strangers, without even being told why they have to die.

An interesting premise, that can spawn a story taking place in any country. All of us in democratic countries – especially America? – suspect that our governments have secret organisations that carry out dirty jobs. Jobs that are for the good of the country, but can only be carried out by disregarding the law. Those who commit crimes but are too rich or too clever to be sent to court have to be killed. Quickly. Discreetly. That's what the film is about.

Jean Reno only appears in the film for about 20 minutes towards the end, but as soon as he entered I sat up in excitement. What an actor! His natural charisma immediately eclipsed everyone else in the film. I haven't seen many of his films. At the moment I can only think of "Leon" and "Godzilla". I need to check out what else he's made.

"Nikita" is a French film. I began to watch it in with English dubbing, but it sounded so silly that I changed to the original French dialog with English subtitles. To dub or not to dub? This is a controversial subject. A lot of serious film fans reject dubbing, saying it spoils a film. This might be the case with "Nikita", but I don't agree in general. I prefer dubbing if it's done well. If I don't have to read the text at the bottom of the screen I can concentrate on the rest of the picture. But can dubbing be done well? Let me give an example. I've seen three versions of the French film "Z". The first time I saw it was in the cinema with English dubbing. A few months later I saw it on television in French with subtitles. The quality of the dubbing had been so good that the subtitled version added nothing to it. Then I rented the film on video, it was dubbed, but to my great surprise it was dubbed differently. In the cinema the dialog had been dubbed by English speakers, on the video the dubbing was by speakers with American accents. The American dubbing grated on me, not just the accents themselves, it seemed to be of lesser quality.

Over the years I've seen many dubbed films. Usually the quality of the English dubbing is poor, but in a few cases I appreciated it. But what about other countries? In Germany almost all foreign films are dubbed, and the dubbing is very high quality. Maybe the reason is that in Germany dubbing is a bigger industry. In England most films shown, even foreign films, are already in English. In Germany the majority of films are not in German, so there are big companies that work on dubbing dialog. Not just films, even whole television series are dubbed. As a fluent German speaker I was pleasantly surprised by the dubbing of the series "Dawson's Creek". When I watched the DVDs with the original sound the dialog was often difficult to understand, because the characters spoke fast and often unclearly. Out of curiosity I changed to the German soundtrack. I was amazed. The dubbing was done by speakers who sounded similar to the original actors. Apart from this the dialog was spoken clearly, so I could understand the German dubbed version better than the original!

My advice is that you keep an open mind. If you have both versions of a film available, try the dubbed version first. If you don't like it change to the subtitled version.