Point of No Return [Blu-ray]

"She is society's worst nightmare, an antisocial misfit convicted of murder and sentenced to die. But a covert government agency may be able to transform her into a sleek, cool-as-ice assassin. Bridget Fonda (Single White Female, Jackie Brown) stars as Maggie in this thriller directed by John Badham (WarGames, Stakeout). Dressed to kill, trained to survive, shes set loose in a deadly world where unexpected romance complicates things even more. Gabriel Byrne, Dermot Mulroney, Anne Bancroft and Harvey Keitel also star.

Point of No Return is one of those Hollywood remakes of a European hit in which one can visualize a committee of studio executives sitting around and saying, "Okay, we know what made the original film unique and different and fun. How can we make that same movie and do exactly the opposite?" For-hire director John Badham (Saturday Night Fever) took La Femme Nikita, Luc Besson's undeniably sexy, original, and kitschy French film about a female assassin, and translated it into a calculating, mechanistic American thriller with no distinctive style. Bridget Fonda gamely plays the willowy street punk who becomes a high-society killer, but once that provocative irony is in place, the movie is pretty much a series of by-the-numbers action set pieces. Until, that is, Dermot Mulroney shows up as a love interest; but even that twist can't save this film. You're much better off with the original, subtitles and all. --Tom Keogh