A Hollywood version of Besson's Nikita, it would be easy to bash this and say that the French film is far superior due to its originality... And it is. But that's not the whole point.

Nikita struggles in that the final transformation to assassin is relatively late in the movie and it ends rather abruptly. The Hollywood version tries to give more weight to the ending and has some success with it.

In reality, the perfect plot is a mixture of the original first half and the remake second half...

I believe that dissonance led to the numerous attempts to take this idea and do more with it. The two TV adaptations, the numerous films that aped the concept with minor twists - not least Besson's own Colombiana (what else do you do when you cannot make Leon 2 but to steal ideas from another of your films and do a little creative joining?)

I personally rate this a 6.5 and the original a 7.5. Parts of the Maggie Q TV version gave hope to improving on this but ultimately fell short. I have yet to watch the Canadian attempt which I've heard is the best of them all.