O Bridget Fonda, where art thou?
I have to admit that I’ve never seen La Femme Nikita. My opinion of Point of No Return might be different if I had. But nothing could change my opinion of Bridget Fonda. I didn’t know how much I loved her until I watched Point of No Return last week for the first time in fifteen years.
The movie starts with Maggie Hayward (Fonda) and her junkie friends trying to knock off a pharmacy. Michael Rapaport is one of the junkie friends. He’s killed in the opening scene. Maggie is nutso with heroin DT’s and she shoots a cop. Her behavior isn’t any better once she’s in jail, and she’s sentenced to die in the electric chair.
Her violent performances catch the eye of Bob (Gabriel Byrne), a recruiter for a top secret government agency. After her faux electrocution (very convincing- she even pees herself), he whisks her away to a secret facility and offers her a chance to live. The catch? She must become a government assassin. At one point during their conversation about her future, she asks, “What if I said you can kiss my ass right in the crack?” It’s obvious that Maggie needs some refining to become a top secret killer. Enter Anne Bancroft as Amanda, the woman in charge of polishing the turd that is Maggie.
Maggie’s metamorphosis has a rough start. She’s reluctant to change and has hairy armpits. Eventually, she relents and the montage of fabulousness begins. She learns some languages, her tattoos disappear, her teeth are whitened and she starts using manners. She and her bouncy hair kill some guys at a restaurant and she kisses Bob before telling him she’ll never kiss him again, and then she’s released into semi-freedom.
She moves into a shit-box apartment and starts dating a cutie pie photographer named J.P. (Dermot Mulroney). She puts ravioli in her mouth and kisses him and he says, “Here’s to making the first move”. There’s a montage of them falling in love and renovating the apartment with a “Here Comes the Sun” cover. She’s trying to hide her true identity from her boyfriend while killing people when his head is turned. There’s also some unfortunate business with the government sending Victor the Cleaner (Harvey Keitel) to kill her because she’s become a liability. She kills him instead, but he gets his revenge in Jackie Brown (oh crap, that was DeNiro).
Point of No Return is cheesy, violent and awesome. Bridget Fonda is aces in this film. She’s married to Danny Elfman now and hasn’t made a movie since 2002. They have a son and Fonda uses hundred dollar bills for baby wipes. But to me, she’ll always be Maggie Hayward, reluctant assassin.
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La Femme Nikita, both the French film and the gritty, dark series are worth your while. But I too have a soft spot in my heart for cute-as-a-bug badass Bfonda. And Harvey K was scary, man. And Gabriel Byrne was really hot.
Gabriel Byrne was really hot in this film. I never really got why she didn’t want to kiss him again.
Well, not everyone appreciates being honed into an amoral assassin. But hey. (g)
I saw this numerous times with a friend of mine who was almost as angry as I am. She got into Nina Simone; I got into guns.
(That story ends a lot more peacefully than you’d guess.)
I get your point, Kormantic, but before that she was a junkie/cop killer. He didn’t really do her any harm. In fact, he saved her life. And he looked great in a suit.