POINT OF NO RETURN
A film review by David Pimmel
Copyright 1993 David Pimmel
starring Bridget Fonda, Gabriel Byrne, Anne Bancroft, Dermot Mulroney,
Harvey Keitel
written by Robert Getchell
directed by John Badham
based on Luc Besson's 1991 film NIKITA, LA FEMME NIKITA in American
release
rated R for violence and such
Synopsis ========
Maggie (Bridget Fonda) is a very bad woman, killing a cop in a drugstore robbery. She is sentenced to death, but is rescued from this fate by Bob (Gabriel Byrne). He turns out to be a recruiter for a covert government organization of assasins, who offers the choice of join or die. Always the pragmatist, Maggie joins up. She is trained to be a killer and then let out into the real world, to perform kills on call.
Review ======
I have not seen NIKITA, the film this is based on. So this review is of the film POINT OF NO RETURN as a stand alone film. I don't really want to go into a debate about whether or not this film should have been made or not. I also don't want to argue about which is better. As a stand alone film, I would recomment this film with some reservation. It has several very strong aspects, but also several that don't seem to work very well.
Bridget Fonda's performance is definitely the highlight of the film. I really didn't like her in SINGLE WHITE FEMALE, but here I think she taps into her genetic actor's roots. Particularly in the beginning, during her bad stage, her performance is very strong. In fact I thought that was the strongest part of the film. After she was fully trained and left the nest, I felt the quality of the film went down.
The primary reason for the drop was the Dermot Mulroney character. I found him to be an annoying bore who detracted from what was interesting to me, the relationship between Bob abd Maggie. He also seemed like a plot gimmick to show Maggie what life could be like if she weren't a professional assasin.
Rating ======
Thumbs Up! *** out of ****
--
David Pimmel pimmel@cs.wisc.edu
.
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