A remake of the popular French film "La Femme Nikita," "Point of No Return" is violent, loud, profane, angry, nasty and, in terms of its plot, often quite ridiculous. In other words, it has all the makings of a box office hit.
Bridget Fonda delivers a first-rate and very physical performance as a foul-mouthed, spaced-out drug addict who kills a cop in cold blood during a drug-store robbery. As a result, she is sentenced to die by lethal injection.
But after the supposed execution, Fonda wakes up to find herself in some sort of underground government assassin training program. A funeral has been staged and the world thinks she is dead. In truth, however, she has been recruited as a killer.
At first, Fonda is a handful, very difficult to train — and recruiter Gabriel Byrne isn't sure she'll come through it. Finally, Byrne's boss (Miguel Ferrer) says if she doesn't shape up, she gets "a bullet in the brain." And you thought your boss was tough.
Eventually, Fonda gets the message. And after extensive training in combat tactics, computer programming and how to eat with a fork, she's a crack operative.
So, she's released back into the world, complete with a new identity. After moving into a beachfront apartment, Fonda finds her significant other in the form of a benign photographer (Dermot Mulroney). But every now and then, the phone rings, someone asks for "Nina" (for her unlikely love of Nina Simone records) and Fonda is off on another job.
Sometimes the jobs are simple, as when she poses as a maid to deliver a bomb to a Marriott Hotel room. Other times they're more difficult, as when she takes aim through a bathroom window while Mulroney, thinking she's simply taking a bath, is proposing marriage through the door.
If you saw "La Femme Nikita" you'll recognize all of this as a surprisingly faithful re-creation of that film.
Director John Badham has made good movies ("WarGames," "Stake-out") and bad movies ("Bird on a Wire," "Short Circuit") but "Point of No Return" lands somewhere in between.
Fonda is terrific, and it's nice to see Anne Bancroft, even in a thankless role. (Though it's not as thankless as "The Cleaner" cameo by Harvey Keitel).
But most of the way, "Point of No Return" is so vague and over-the-top that it all just seems rather, well, pointless.
The film is rated R for considerable violence and profanity, with some sex and nudity.