Point of No Return

Badham, however, keeps the whole thing up and running expertly -- it's interesting to note, also, that this Americanized version contains far more big-bang explosions and an elevated body-count than the French source material. Big deal. In a story as well done as this, a few extra bullet-hits only add to the delightful mayhem. Read full review

If I didn't feel the same degree of involvement with Point of No Return that I did with "La Femme Nikita," it may be because the two movies are so similar in plot, look and feel. I had deja vu all through the movie. Read full review

The big difference between Luc Besson's "La Femme Nikita" and this big, slick remake is that this new film has less visual edge and is more sentimental. It's more upfront with the idea that Maggie, as she's called here, has feelings. Still, Fonda's at her most compelling in the early scenes. [19 March 1993, p.50]

Badham uses faster cuts and cockeyed camera angles to give us Fonda's unsettled view of the world in the early scenes, then settles into a more conventional action vocabulary. He relies on stylish production design - Fonda's cell boasts a high-tech cantilevered bed - to suggest that this adventure is fantastic, even alien, to most sensibilities. (Besson used the opposite tack. His production design for the long training sequence of the film was naturalistic, his camera approaches quirky and alienated.) [19 March 1993, p.C]

Pixie-like Bridget Fonda turns in a powerhouse, Rambette performance. [19 March 1993, p.5]

What's missing in Point of No Return is basically the same thing that was missing in La Femme Nikita - cleverness. Both are stylish action pictures that would seem a lot more stylish with a few ingenious plot twists. [23 March 1993, p.E1]

Badham, a journeyman director prone to coughing up hairballs such as ``The Hard Way'' and ``Bird on a Wire,'' does unexpectedly well with the supporting cast. He actually wrests a good performance out of Anne Bancroft, as a veteran operative who trains Maggie in feminine wiles and etiquette. Improving on Jeanne Moreau in the original, Bancroft is a fierce combination of society hostess and drill sergeant. [23 March 1993, p.D06]

While Badham's film will be best appreciated by those unfamiliar with Besson's forerunner, "Point" has at least two major virtues of its own. The first is Fonda's bravura performance as Maggie, which rivals Anne Parillaud's strong work in the first film. And the second is the choice of music by Nina Simone (five tunes in all, including such master works as "Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair" and "Feeling Good") to evoke Maggie's emotional states at various points during her strange journey. These two aspects of Badham's remake should make it a worthwhile, if inevitably redundant, experience for those who enjoyed "La Femme Nikita." And they help make it a real winner for thriller buffs who avoid subtitled imports. [23 March 1993, p.C5]

If Point of No Return is trash, it’s slick, diverting trash. Read full review

I'm not convinced there was a compelling reason to remake La Femme Nikita. The original stands well on its own, and, having been made only a few years ago, it's definitely not dated. Nevertheless, mainstream American audiences hate subtitles, so this won't be the last foreign language film to receive this treatment. In terms of style and originality, Point of No Return can't compare to its inspiration, but, for a Hollywood thriller, it's more than adequate. Read full review

Once the story settles down to wondering whether Maggie/Claudia can find happiness in romantic love, it becomes noticeably less interesting. Ms. Fonda sometimes verges on the mechanical in mouthing her character's nobler sentiments (the film also relies heavily on Nina Simone records to express its heroine's feelings), but that is to be expected. At heart, this woman is little more than a laboratory specimen with great legs, so it's miraculous to find an actress breathing life into her at all. Read full review

If imitation is the highest form of flattery, then “Point of No Return,” a soulless, efficiently slavish remake of “La Femme Nikita,” creates a whole new category of homage-paying. Read full review

It’s not that Robert Getchell’s script is any less crackbrained than Besson’s. This kind of kink just works better with a French accent. Read full review

The change of locale to Washington, D.C., Venice, Calif., and New Orleans only re-emphasizes the fact that this sleek comic-strip mix of violence and romance could take place anywhere except in the real world. Read full review

As slick and heartless as the original; the story has a few possibilies for irony and political commentary, but the filmmakers bury them in the general atmosphere of violence and manipulation. A few scenes are effective on their own terms, though, and Bridget Fonda does as much with her role as the heavy-handed screenplay allows. [26 March 1993, p.12]

Not good enough to be remembered past next week, not bad enough to get worked up about, “Point” is a factory product pure and simple, something to throw onto the screen until the next something comes along. Read full review

POINT OF NO RETURN remains entertaining, mainly thanks to Fonda. One of the sleekest and smartest of the young stars of the 90s, she makes a highly watchable action hero in a genre usually dominated by muscle-bound men. Read full review

The slick, Hollywood repaint that director John Badham gives it is actually an improvement, even if a heartless one. Read full review

Nothing in her performance in the second two-thirds of the film hints at the shallows or depths that could allow Maggie to be a killer -- before or after. [19 March 1993, p.C1]

It's a ridiculous premise, and the film works best when Badham seems in on the joke. By the time Harvey Keitel appears as a ruthless operative assigned to clean up a botched job, the film has reached its own point of no return, tipping over the edge into rib-tickling parody. Keitel is one of the few actors alive who can make you chuckle while disposing of corpses in an acid bath. [19 March 1993, p.16]

If they gave an Oscar for the most unnecessary movie of the year, the award for 1993 would have to go to "Point of No Return," the latest product of Hollywood's current mania for remaking successful recent foreign films. It's not that this movie is such an awful rehashing of "La Femme Nikita," Luc Besson's stylish French thriller that was the biggest foreign-language hit of 1990 in the United States. It's that the first movie had such high visibility and is still so fresh in our minds, and this Americanized version is so totally the same film (except for the ending, it's virtually scene for scene the same) that it seems like a criminal waste of $30 million. [19 March 1993]

"La Femme Nikita" is worth renting at your local video store. You will see a new face, actress Anne Parillaud, in a story that seems plugged into a fresh, subterranean Parisian world. By comparison, Point of No Return is a series of fashion ads and standard Hollywood explosion scenes. [19 March 1993, p.C]

The remake succeeds in recapturing the suspense of key sequences such as the tense bathroom scene and the restaurant assassination, but most of the time it's a pedestrian piece of work unimaginatively directed by John Badham who lacks Luc Besson's skill for distracting us from disbelief. [2 July 1993, p.11]

Screenwriter Robert Getchell and director John Badham (whose resume includes the fallen "Bird on a Wire") wouldn't know a believable moment if it hit them. Fonda's transformation to lethal weapon, her affair with Mulroney and the implied romance with Byrne are all lukewarm, lazily outlined conceits. There have been deeper human relationships in TV commercials. Read full review

Even by the slight standards of high concept -- put sexpot in next-to-nothing costume and have her shoot people -- "Point of No Return" is thin. Screenwriters Robert Getchell and Alexandra Seros make attempts at humor, primarily such high frivolities as sadism or food-gorging, and there is a perfunctory attempt to round out Ms. Killer herself, largely socio-drivel about her abusive upbringing. [19 March 1993]

In Point of No Return, a pointless remake of the slickly violent 1990 import La Femme Nikita, Fonda unconvincingly attempts to fill French actress Anne Parillaud's skyscraper pumps as a punkish cop killer turned government assassin. Draped in the proverbial little black dress, Fonda blows away her targets in a chi-chi Washington restaurant and makes her getaway through the kitchen's laundry chute with a volley of explosives at her heels. But as she daintily steps around the spilt blood and lettuce, the fair-of-face Fonda is more debutante of death than lethal weapon. [19 March 1993, p.8D]

A technically slavish and totally atrocious Hollywood remake. [19 March 1993]