Little Nikita
Short description
Little Nikita is an American thriller set during the Cold War. Jeff Grant is a teenager living an ordinary life in California, an all-American boy preparing to apply to the Air Force Academy. His world is upended when an FBI agent, Roy Parmenter, discovers an inconsistency in his file suggesting that Jeff's parents died decades earlier. The truth is that they are Soviet agents who settled in the United States in their youth and lived quietly for twenty years while waiting for orders. Jeff has no knowledge of their secret mission, and he finds himself torn between loyalty to his family and to his country. Parmenter, who has his own reasons for pursuing Soviet intelligence, works with the boy to understand what his parents are hiding.
The film was directed by Richard Benjamin and written by Bo Goldman and John Hill. It was the fourth and fifth of Benjamin's features in the same year, arriving alongside My Stepmother Is an Alien, and followed his earlier comedies My Favorite Year, City Heat and The Money Pit. Sidney Poitier plays Parmenter, with River Phoenix as Jeff, and Richard Jenkins and Caroline Kava as his parents. Richard Bradford and Richard Lynch also appear among the 35 credited cast members.
Released in March 1988 on a budget of about 15 million dollars, the film returned roughly 2 million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds a rating of 5.9 from around 6,400 votes, and on TMDB a rating of 6 from 123 votes. A critics' rating of 5.5 from 16 reviews places it broadly in line with those audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- Filming period: December 29, 1986 – April 11, 1987.
- When David Puttnam, the new head of Columbia Pictures, first saw this film, he told director Richard Benjamin that it was one of the worst films he had ever laid eyes on. He even asked editor Jim Clark (1931-2016) if anything could be done to save it.
- Although this was not known at the time of the film's release, it later emerged that there were indeed 'sleeper' agents of Soviet intelligence operating in the United States, employing the so-called method of 'hiding in plain sight.' Some even had children, went to work, and had friends and neighbors who suspected nothing. In 2010, a group of 'illegals' was arrested and subsequently exchanged for several Americans detained for espionage in Russia.
- When Roy hands his driver's license to Jeff, you can notice the date of birth – August 23, 1970. This is the date of birth of River Phoenix, who played the main role in the film.
Similar movies
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
