DVD Review: NIKITA Season 1

NIKITA is an interesting remake of LA FEMME NIKITA. The Luc Besson film still inspires Hollywood. The first remake, POINT OF NO RETURN, is a crappy film. The next remake, LA FEMME NIKITA was an intriguing TV series with its fine moments. Now NIKITA takes the premise of what happens after Nikita (Maggie Q) escaped Division and decides to bring Division down. She brings in a protege Alex (Lyndsy Fonseca) to be trained in Division. Nikita works on the outside while Alex works on the inside. Michael (Shane West) trained Nikita and he is supposed to be hunting down Nikita for the head of Division, the corrupted Percy (Xander Berkeley) who sells some of Division's services to the highest bidder. Michael is conflicted on whether he should bring down Nikita or help her. What complicates Nikita's quest to tear down Division is that Percy has black boxes that contain blackmail evidence that keeps Percy in power. Nikita must destroy the black boxes and ultimately right the wrongs she did when she worked for Division as a trained killer for the government.

NIKITA is the best remake of LA FEMME NIKITA so far. It has managed to outshine the first TV series. Maggie Q manages to bring sex appeal, strength, and vulnerability in a way Peta Wilson never could as Nikita. Shane West makes a more interesting Michael too while Melinda Clarke gives a run for the money as the dangerous Amanda. NIKITA weaves the present and past of the characters to great effect. You learn about Nikita's time in Division and Alex's past (before and when Nikita found her). The writers make the flashbacks tie in with the stories. Also the action is a big plus in this character based thriller.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

INSIDE DIVISION is a two part making-of documentary that chronicles the origins and casting of NIKITA in part 1 while part 2 shows all the various elements that go into each episode form the writing to production design. This documentary is on disc 5 along with character profiles on Nikita, Alex, Michael and Percy (too bad they didn't have one on Amanda). All these feature interviews with cast and crew along with some behind-the-scenes production footage and clips from the show.

Half of the episodes have deleted scenes while members of the creative team provide audio commentaries for PHOENIX (with Executive Producer/ Series Developer Craig Silverstein, Exec Producer David Levison, and Episode Writer Jim Barnes) and ONE WAY (with Executive Producer/ Series Developer Craig Silverstein and Co-Producer/ Episode Writer Albert Kim).

FINAL ANALYSIS: NIKITA explodes in ways that the previous TV series LA FEMME NIKITA never did. NIKITA is a action charged thriller series that outshines all previous remakes of LA FEMME NIKITA. I can't wait to see season 2.

this DVD review is (c)9-20-2011 David Blackwell and cannot be reprinted without permission. send all comments to feedback@enterline-media.com