Little Nikita (1988)

Absolutely Fantastic

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

We see so much of Joaquin Phoenix in hit movies it is easy to forget about his brother, River, who was very prolific as a teen but died of a drug overdose at only 23. He was a very good-looking kid and a good actor also.Here he is teenager Jeff Grant playing a high school student in Southern California, trying to get nominated for the Air Force Academy. He is interviewed by Sidney Poitier who plays Roy Parmenter, an Air Force officer. That is how you get into one of the military academies, you have to be nominated then impress enough people in the interview process.What Jeff didn't know, but Parmenter suspected, Jeff's parents were part of a sleeper cell of Russian spies. So most of the movie is Jeff trying to grow up while Parmenter is using this newfound relationship as a way to get closer to the spying activities.There is a chase scene of sorts, mostly a low speed effort where Jeff has been kidnapped and on a train headed towards the Mexican border while his mom and dad follow in their family car. There is a more exciting shoot-out at the Mexican border, where a couple of kids pick up the ice chest stuffed with money and take it with them into Mexico. Overall not a very exciting movie but good to see all the fine actors, including a young Richard Jenkins as the dad, Richard Grant. Caroline Kava as the mom, Elizabeth Grant. And Richard Bradford as the Russian agent Konstantin Karpov.The title comes from the fact that Jeff's real name was Nikita, and the Russian agent called him Little Nikita. Saw it on the "Movies!" TV network.

The plot of this film has more holes than Swiss Cheese and seems more than a little dated, even if the baton of the quintessential foreign bad guy has passed now from the Nazis to the Soviets to the Islamic terrorists or (perennial favorite) our own US government.What if the most ordinary white-bread American parents (yours) turn out to be Soviet spies? That is the premise of this film. What if some renegade Soviet spy is blackmailing the KGB operatives in the US by killing its agents one by one for MONEY! How capitalist! How demented can you be? This is the kind of guy who would take your girlfriend water skiing just so he can see her get smooshed by an oil tanker or something. And what are the poor hapless KGB agents supposed to do? Send your Mom and Dad off to pay this guy off? Why? Almost all of the agents are dead. The only ones left are Mom and Dad. Considering that Mom and Dad are near useless as agents, hey, be our guest, comrade.And Mom and Dad are sleepers biding their time running a flower shop while waiting for their orders, which finally come in a dead fish. But by this time their covers have worked so well they are now God-fearing Americans. It is as though Ozzie and Harriet were Russian spies. But of course there is blackmail.Meanwhile who is the FBI agent assigned to this case? Good old Sidney Poitier. Not only is he just the fatherly kind of guy to investigate and then help poor little Nikita (River Phoenix) along, but he moves in next door and is strangely open about his being an FBI agent. Just your friendly neighborhood FBI agent, who washes his car on the weekend and sleeps with the schoolmarm, but who is ready with his weaponry in any case. Gradually he convinces the boy (River Phoenix) of the facts of the matter. I mean wouldn't anybody be convinced that their parents are Soviet spies? This convincing takes about five minutes. I guess teens will believe anything if the news is delivered by Sidney Poitier. Meanwhile River places his trust in this total stranger rather than his own parents who are so good at being faux Americans that they have forgotten their Russian roots.The fateful moment comes when the KGB boss invites the parents to the Kirov Ballet for instructions. The invitation arrives in a fish in a coded message in a metal canister. Mom cuts herself rather badly on a knife she is so upset by this call to action in the service of Mother Russia, but at least they get to go to a nice ballet about Sleeping Beauty out of it. Anyway Mom looks like she is going to exsanguinate there in the kitchen and all the boy does is go off to his room where he leaves his bedside record player going as he drops off to sleep fully clothed.Well the parents botch the hand off and wound the bad KGB agent killer and some Mexicans being deported make off with the money and cross the border with it, no questions asked. The killer is wounded but is still alive however and Poitier and the parents chase after the KGB boss, who by this time is taking poor Phoenix at gunpoint to Tijuana aboard public transit. Why? Can't they afford to own automobiles? (Perhaps The budget for transport had to be cut severely after they paid this agent killer off.) And why are they taking the boy? To adopt him and raise him as a Russian? Makes no sense. Are Americans that stupid? Are Russians? I don't think so.After a ridiculous interview at gunpoint between the parents, the boy, the KGB agent killer, and the KGB Boss, they arrive at the border. Nobody on the train seems to notice that folks have guns pointed at each other back there, but then maybe on the San Diego transit system such things are commonplace.Things resolve themselves finally when they shoot the KGB killer and some of the KGB boss's henchmen haul the corpse across the border about as easily as one might leave an amusement park. They even haul the agent killer's (Scuba they call him) dead body across too, no questions asked. The border agent looks on innocently as though he were Gomer Pyle, as if to say "Thanks for visiting, come back soon, y'hear?" Admittedly this film was made in the mid-1980s before 9/11 and the breakup of the Soviet Union. The borders with Mexico and Canada were scandalously porous in those days. The Soviets were still the designated bad guys, but hey, they're just doing their jobs, right? Things were softening between the Soviets and the Americans then, but I still don't think you would have gone off to have a beer with Konstantin and Vladimir after a hard day at the FBI office.

This was a fairly involving story, although it's better in the first half. After that, the kid gets annoying but then the film picks back up in the last 15 minutes. The story is about this teen boy "Jeff Grant" (River Phoenix) who discovers his parents are "sleepr" KGB agents, spies are out of the business. They have come to the United States to start over with their kid.Meanwhile, an assassin is killing those former, or "sleeper," if you will, agents. "Roy Parmenter" (Sidney Poitier), an FBI man, is after anyone it seems. That last part is a bit confusing. The story taxes ones believability here and there but is interesting most of the way. However, I thought Phoenix overacts in a number of scenes. This was far from his best performance in his abbreviated film career.

On one level, "Little Nikita" is just another silly action movie. But strong performances and some interesting turns keep this one afloat. FBI agent Roy Parmenter (Sidney Poitier) interviews teenager Jeff Grant (River Phoenix), who is trying to get into the Air Force Academy. But while reviewing Jeff, Roy discovers the most surprising thing of all: Jeff's parents are Soviet "sleeper" spies who fled to the United States and never told him about their history. Moreover, there's renegade Soviet agent Scuba - who murdered Roy's partner many years earlier - looking for Jeff, while the USSR has sent someone to capture Scuba! Yeah, it's beyond convoluted, and - quite frankly - improbable. But director Richard Benjamin knows how to to do it. There isn't a dull moment anywhere in the movie. Pretty interesting. And playing Jeff's dad is Richard Jenkins, aka Nate Sr on "Six Feet Under".