Nikita

Nikita (1990) is Luc Besson's French thriller you can watch online on iFILM. Anne Parillaud plays a strung-out junkie who guns down a cop during a botched robbery and is handed a death sentence for it.

Instead of an execution, the state stages her death and starts over. They rebuild the girl from scratch — table manners, marksmanship, hand-to-hand combat, the trick of vanishing into a crowd. Years of training turn a feral addict into a flawless assassin. Then they cut her loose with a fake name and an ordinary life, broken only by phone calls ordering a kill she can never explain to the man she loves. Tchéky Karyo is the handler who shapes her, Jeanne Moreau teaches her how to be a woman, and Jean Reno shows up as a chillingly efficient cleaner.

Besson made one of the decade's most copied action films. A Hollywood remake, a TV series and a wave of gun-toting heroines all trace back here. Cold neon, sharp cutting, an Éric Serra score. Stream Nikita (1990) online on iFILM.