Femme Nikita, La
I have never seen the American version of this film (filed as The Assassin , or Point of No Return , or some such shit) but it's not a great leap to assume that it would hardly compare to Luc Besson's stunningly original original.
This film really shouldn't work. The main character is a sociopathic smacky freak who kills a cop, and shows so little remorse that she's saved from jail and put to work as an assassin by the government. An anti-hero is one thing, but this character is just plain anti – a nihilistic hollow shell – yet there is a childlike innocence to her. When she kills the cop it isn't because of ego, or a master plan, or even to protect herself – it's just because. She does it partially just to see what happens, and partially because her life is so meaningless at that point she assumes all life is.
It's the beautiful complexity of this film and that character that the more she kills, the more she finds her humanity, but the further away any chance at true happiness is for her. When Besson is on target, as he is here, he makes some of the most exciting and layered cinema I have seen, and Nikita is a brilliant sister to his other assassin masterpiece, Leon.