An influential action thriller has been remade 5 times, but one might just be better than all the rest

Remakes are part and parcel of the entertainment industry, but you’d have thought somebody at some point might have considered stepping in and declaring that the world really didn’t need any more new versions of Luc Besson’s classic La Femme Nikita.

The 1990 action thriller finds a convicted felon given a new identity and trained to become an elite assassin instead of being sent to jail, before her personal and professional lives get complicated when she falls for a man completely oblivious to her secret double life, as the two begin edging ever closer in destructive fashion.

As well as stamping its influence all over an entire genre, the acclaimed original ended up being subjected to no less than five remakes, which feels like overkill. Hong Kong do-over Black Cat arrived only a year later, before Hollywood got in on the act with the Bridget Fonda-led Point of No Return, with Hindi cinema’s Kartoos landing in 1999. That’s without even mentioning the TV series with the same name as Besson’s OG ran for five seasons and 96 episodes between 1997 and 2001, which came shortly before Maggie Q headlined another episodic interpretation that ran for four years.

While the best spin on the story will inarguably almost always place the progenitor at the forefront, Redditors have been out in force to declare Point of No Return as a more than worthy rehash that stands shoulder-to-shoulder with its esteemed and illustrious forebear. Critics weren’t too sold on Jon Badham’s reheated rampage of revenge, but if you have to pick one of the five La Femme Nikita remakes above all, then the finest feature-length one will do if you haven’t got the time to binge either of the TV shows.