Convicted felon Nikita isn't going to jail; she's given a new identity and trained, stylishly, as a top secret spy/assassin.
An urgent life-or-death dilemma befalls Nikita--the feral street girl and violent drug addict--after killing a police officer at point blank. Hopeless, Nikita is given a new lease of life, when she reluctantly exchanges her doomed fate for a secret government program that promises to mould her into a cold-blooded assassin under the wing of her sadistic mentor, Bob. Now--with a new set of skills, a new identity, and lethally sophisticated looks--Nikita is the ultimate weapon and the perfect puppet for doing the government's dirty work; however, what happens if this trained killer chooses love over death?—Nick Riganas
A woman in a criminal gang is captured after killing a policeman during a botched robbery. She is sentenced to life in prison but while in prison she is approached by a government agent who intends to make her a secret agent. She reluctantly goes along with the idea.—grantss
Nikita is a young lady who with three Nihilist friends commit robbery and murder while on drugs. After her trial she is not executed or taken to prison, but to a school for special operatives. She is told that Nikita no longer exists and she will be trained to pay back society for what she has done, as a spy/assassin. She is trained for over two years and with no warning is handed a gun in a restaurant and told to kill the man at the next table as her handler leaves.—John Vogel <[email protected]>
Nikita (Anne Parillaud) is a nihilistic teenage junkie who commits her life to anarchy, drugs and violence. One night, she participates in the robbery (with fellow junkies Zap (Alain Lathiere, Coyotte (Patrick Fontana), Rico (Marc Duret) and Punk (Laura Cheron)) of a pharmacy owned by a friend's parents. The chemist (Jacques Boudet) catches the punks red handed and is shocked to see his own son in the gang.The robbery erupts into a gunfight with local police, and her accomplices are killed. Suffering severe withdrawal symptoms, she murders a police officer. Nikita is arrested, tried, and convicted of murder, and is sentenced to life in prison. All through her incarceration, Nikita refuses to bow down to authority and is literally dragged to prison where she is kept in a straight jacket.
In prison, government officials fake her death, making it appear that she has committed suicide, and remove her from prison. She awakens in a nondescript room, where a well-dressed, hard-looking man named Bob (Tcheky Karyo) tells her that, although officially dead and buried, she is in the custody of a shadowy government agency known as "the Centre" (possibly part of the DGSE).She is given the choice of becoming an assassin, or of occupying "row 8, plot 30", her fake grave. After some resistance, she chooses the former and gradually proves to be a talented killer. She is taught computer skills, martial arts, and firearms.Nikita continues to be difficult with her teachers. She scares the IT teacher with a live mouse and chews the ear of the martial arts teacher and he attacks her. Bob refuses permission to Nikitia for a night pass for her birthday.Grossman (Philippe Leroy), the leader of the facility believes that Bob picked up a failure, but Bob says that Nikita has potential. Bob has 2 weeks to turn things around with Nikita. Bob reaches out to Nikita and celebrates her birthday with her.One of her trainers, Amande (Jeanne Moreau), transforms her from a degenerate drug addict to a beautiful Femme Fatale. Amande even teaches Nikita on how to use her smile as a weapon.Amande implies that she also was rescued and trained by the Centre.
Nikita's initial mission, killing a foreign diplomat in a crowded restaurant and escaping from his well-armed bodyguards to the Centre, doubles as the final test in her training. Nikita is given an escape route by Bob, but the route was bricked over and Nikita was trapped by the bodyguards in the kitchen. She had to use the limited resources on her hands to escape and had to run all the way back to the Center. Nikita is livid at Bob and the Center for being treated this way.She graduates and begins life as a sleeper agent in Paris (under the name Marie).
After meeting Marco (Jean-Hugues Anglade) in a supermarket, the two develop an intimaterelationship, although he knows nothing of her real work. After 6 months of being together, Marco is curious about her past and why she has no family or other friends.Nikita invites Bob to dinner as "Uncle Bob". He tells stories about Marie's imaginary childhood (She wore pigtails, always had a ribbon in her hair and wore a white dress. She could imitate frogs) and give the couple tickets for a trip to Venice, purportedly as an engagement gift. Bob says that he is a travel agent and the gift is a part of the perks he receives at work.
Nikita and Marco go on the trip. As they prepare to make love after arrival, the phone rings. She thinks it's the room service they just ordered, but it is instructions for her next job. Her room is perfectly located for her to shoot the target. She goes to the bathroom, supposedly to take a bath, and as she prepares the rifle, Marco tries to talk to her through the door. The instructions about her target take longer than expected and she can't answer him. She finally shoots her target but barely conceals the rifle before Marco walks in, against her wishes. Nikita is distraught that her work has caused them difficulties.
Still, her career as an assassin goes well until a document-theft mission in an embassy goes awry. Nikita is assigned to steal some documents from the personal safe of the ambassador, but the ambassador himself cannot be hurt. Nikita infiltrates the apartment of the ambassador's mistress and holds him hostage, while her colleague puts on a disguise of the ambassador to go to his safe.But at the last minute, the agency finds out that the ambassador uses a password with his bodyguards everyday and he changed it again that very morning.Back in Paris, the Centre sends in Victor "The Cleaner" (Jean Reno), a ruthless operative, to salvage the mission and destroy all the evidence of the foul-up. When the disguised operative is killed by Victor (Victor shoots him when the operative makes a fuss about Victor dissolving the bodyguard's bodies in the sink using acid), Nikita is assigned to take his place. They nearly complete the mission before it goes bad when the ambassador's dog enters the office and barks at Nikita, thereby alarming the guards. Victor takes on a bunch of guards before being fatally wounded but drives Nikita to safety before succumbing to his wounds.
Marco reveals that he has discovered Nikita's secret life, and, concerned over how her activities are affecting her psychologically, persuades her to disappear. Upon discovering that she abandoned the Centre, Bob goes to their apartment and meets with Marco. When Bob says that Nikita is at risk because she still has the documents taken from the embassy, Marco hands them over. The two men agree that they will both miss Nikita.
