(Of course, Nikita is not available on DVD in Australia, whilst Betty Blue is; presumably because the DVD companies assume that the only reason why enough Australians to justify the expense would sit through a French film (with subtitles and all) is to watch sex whilst appearing intellectual for doing so, and there isn't all that much sex in Nikita.)
Europe is R2, yes. I wouldn't hold my breath; they've only recently released The City of Lost Children (and a rather poorly version, where the subtitles are part of the main picture and cannot be switched off), and Delicatessen isn't out at all. It's not economical to do a R4 release for anything that's not mass-market. (Nikita may have enough of a niche audience to justify a release through a small company, à la TCoLC, but a lot of other films won't be that lucky. Myself, I'd like to see a DVD of the Icelandic film <I>Angels of the Universe</I>.)
Wasn't the TV series made for the American market?
There have been much better movies about policework Nikita is a film about something it's better that we dont know about... secret societies, disavowed political (re) actionaries... and it gets it's point across, but there are some failings as far as the film tries to express, but gets lost in the action that such films seem to require. the idea is great, and for what it does, it does convey that futuristic sense. But there is a better film, I cant remember what it is called, but it's a great film, about an ordinary copper. Where one draws the line is more interesting than what happens assuming that line has been crossed? Mike
The TV series was GREAT! It was one of the few good things on TV here for several years. It was a very realistic deep-black covert ops show, where they spent as much time trying to foil the French, Chinese and Russians as they did combatting the mysterious Red Cell and their own internal struggles.
Defiantely worth a look, in some ways it is reminiscent of Nowhere Man.
The Hollywood remake was (the ?)Asassan starting um... that girl from single white female. Pretty much the same story but hollywood-ised.
Well, perhaps they're a bit tardy with the R4 version. (What's Yoorup, R2?) From what I heard, it was a French take on American butthead thrillers. So it was perhaps fitting that there's a really crappy TV series spun off from it.