Point Of No Return

Point Of No Return (1993)
directed by John Badham

In addition to being a remake of the 1990 French film La Femme Nikita, Point Of No Return is also loosly based on the Expose song of the same name.

Bridget Fonda plays a junkie named Maggie. She and her druggie friends, the members of Color Me Badd, rob a pharmacy. After a shootout that leaves everybody else dead, Maggie kills a cop and is sentenced to death.

The movie is strong on well-chosen details- we're shown the needle going into her track-marked arm.

The execution is carried out, but not really. She wakes up (or Crispen Glover wakes up) in a white room (with black cutains...come on people now/ smile on your brother...I haven't seen the ad for the Freedom Rock collection in 20 years but I can still hear the songs all in order) inside of some secret government building. After a failed escape attempt, Bob, her new boss, shoots her in the leg.

To aid in her recovery she asks for Nina Simone and more painkillers. Reasonable. I'd ask for Tanya Donelly and more painkillers but not in that order. Maggie is given training in computers and martial arts but the real action comes when she's trained to be a lady. Her teacher is The Miracle Worker herself, Anne Bancroft. It's funny to see her name in the opening credits as they use Blade Runner-type lettering.

My brother and I saw this movie when it came out and to this day he'll still bust out with, "I never did mind about the little things".

I like how Bob is openly in love with Maggie. The two of them are genuine together. It's all very un-Remains of the Day. Maggie might feel the same way towards Bob; you never really know, which is good. Not everything is spelled out.

She's trained to be an assassin and her first job is a success. She graduates and is sent to live in California. She arrives, walks past what I think is the mural from Xanadu, and meets scruffy J.P. Dermot Mulroney plays a dirty hippie photographer and he's almost at the height of his handsomeness which he eventuaslly reaches in My Best Friend's Wedding.

Maggie and J.P. fall in love, she does a few more jobs, but it all comes down to the last one. Things go horribly, horribly wrong and a cleaner is called in. It's Harvey Keitel, playing a role similar to the one he played a year later in Pulp Fiction. Here though, instead of charming and funny he's just brutal and scary.

The movie ends with Maggie free. I think about her choice and wonder what I would do in her place. Stay with Dermot and continue to be an assassin or go free and lose Dermot? Luckily it's just a movie and I don't have to decide.


Fun fact: Did you know that Dermot Mulroney plays the cello and was featured on Melissa Etheridge's 1992 album Never Enough?