Point of No Return (1993)

Director: John Badham                                       Writer: Robert Getchell
Music Supervisor: Hans Zimmer                          Cinematography: Michael W. Watkins
Starring: Gabriel Byrne, Bridget Fonda, Harvey Keitel and Anne Bancroft

Based on the film La Femme Nikita by the great French filmmaker Luc Besson, Point of No Return is an Americanized version of the transformation of a drug addicted waif into a government sponsored killer--sort of a cross between Pretty Woman and The Bourne Identity. Even though we’re into the 1990s by now, there’s still a lingering 80s sensibility to the film. Hans Zimmer’s film score has some nice moments, but then he gives in to the synthesizer and drum machine ethos. Also, there’s little development of Bridget Fonda’s character to draw the viewer in at the beginning of the film. What we’re left with, then, is action. And that is a preview of the sensation films to come in the following decades, devoid of all the things that make film great.

Fonda is picked up by the police after a burglary gone bad, her death is faked by the government, and she is brought into a secret agency by Gabriel Byrne--who, mercifully uses his own Irish accent in the film. Once she’s been trained to fight and kill, along with etiquette lessons by Anne Bancroft, she’s released on her own to await instructions. Meanwhile, there’s a pathetic love story with Dermot Mulroney that is not only unbelievable, but kind of tedious. At the same time, Byrne is obviously in love with her and still sends her out on missions, ala Notorious. But this is light years away from Hitchcock. John Badham, who did a nice job on Stakeout, can’t break loose from his 80s style and the film suffers for it. Fonda is more of a cardboard cutout than a character, and the rest of the cast seems like they’re working in a television show.

In the end, there is too little character development and too much of an emphasis on action and violence to make the film remarkable in any way. Twenty years later, even the violence seems tame, again, like something from a television show. At this point it’s too early in Byrne’s career for him to have developed anything like depth in his characters today, and Harvey Keitel and Anne Bancroft have little more than cameo roles. Honestly, there’s nothing really offensive in the film that would lead one to instantly claim it a bad movie, but sometimes that is the offense. Had it been made even five years later it probably would have been a significant improvement. But as it stands, Point of No Return is not something that bears watching.