MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Point’ Fails to Make One : Remake of ‘La Femme Nikita’ is more adept at providing an aura of excitement than actually delivering the goods.

It’s a dirty job making movies like “Point of No Return,” but somebody’s got to do it. Somebody’s got to make the middling commercial piffle that the Hollywood system has to produce or die. Not good enough to be remembered past next week, not bad enough to get worked up about, “Point” is a factory product pure and simple, something to throw onto the screen until the next something comes along.

With a stark (if not exactly original) title and a striking advertising image of star Bridget Fonda looking surly and seductive in a backless cocktail dress with a monster weapon in her hand, “Point” (citywide) is more adept at providing the aura of excitement than actually delivering the goods.

There’s an irony in that failure, however, for “Point” is an almost scene-by-scene remake of an energetic and very popular French action film, “La Femme Nikita.” With its story of how a hot-tempered wharf rat gets turned into a polished and feminine assassin, “Nikita” just about begged to be remade into a brassy Hollywood production.

And, with the gamin-like Fonda substituting for French actress Anne Parillaud and actionmeister John Badham (“Blue Thunder,” “The Hard Way”) taking the reins from Luc Besson, a polished commercial success seemed almost assured.

Unfortunately, “Point of No Return” not only is a copy, it has the heft and feel of one. Though the first film was as silly as this one, it had an urgency in its pacing and a sense of belief in its cockeyed story that has not survived in the remake.

The tale (rated R for strong violence, language and sexuality) begins in our nation’s capital, where a band of drugged-out crazies attacks a local drug store. “I need it so bad,” a wasted Maggie (Fonda) mumbles, presumably referring to a fix, not a decent script. A noisy shootout with the police soon intervenes, and before you can say “murder one,” Maggie is on trial for her life.

But the government, ever on the lookout for potentially useful citizens, has other plans, and one morning Maggie wakes up in a bare cell on a bed that looks like an Italian design team made it from a leftover Erector set.

In walks no-last-name Bob (Gabriel Byrne), a shadowy operative with the air of defrocked priest, who gives Maggie a “do something to help your country” pep talk and then offers her what amounts to a scholarship to a federal charm school for assassins.

We’ll fix your teeth, we’ll clear up your complexion, we’ll teach you a whole range of skills, from computers to (courtesy of Anne Bancroft’s Amanda) eating “without fake middle-class delicacy.” In return for the makeover of your dreams, all you have to do is put your killer instinct at the service of Uncle Sam.

None of this turns out to be as easy as Bob makes it sound, but Maggie does learn to dress as demurely as an Avon lady and is relocated to a beach apartment in Venice that appears to be just around the corner from the place D-FENS was headed toward in “Falling Down.”

Though Maggie doesn’t have any crazed defense workers to deal with, she does have to contend with the love-struck attentions of moony photographer J.P. (Dermot Mulroney) as well as the odd demands of her work, which include a run-in with an all-business type known as Victor the Cleaner and played with low-key humor by the all-business Harvey Keitel.

As written by Robert Getchell and Alexandra Seros, Maggie’s adventures have a pro forma feeling, as if all anyone cared about was making sure that there was enough of a balance between mushy romantic montage and glass-shattering action to make this the perfect date-night movie for a reader of Harlequin romances who has a crush on a card-carrying gun nut.

Director Badham, who must have snoozed through many of the dramatic scenes, so indifferent are the line readings, does try to rouse himself for those action sequences, and the sight of Fonda blowing people away in a variety of elegant designer creations is certainly arresting.

But though Fonda probably had fun in this tough-talking, straight-shooting role, she lacks the diamond hardness Parillaud brought to “Nikita.” She is also much too good an actress to have to spend so much of her time, as she did in “Single White Female,” running around in her underwear. If “Point of No Return” does turn out to be a commercial success, perhaps Fonda will get enough clout to get a change of clothes. She deserves it.

‘Point of No Return’

Bridget Fonda: Maggie

Gabriel Byrne: Bob

Dermot Mulroney: J.P.

Miguel Ferrer: Kaufmann

Anne Bancroft: Amanda

Harvey Keitel: Victor the Cleaner

An Art Linson production, released by Warner Bros. Director John Badham. Producer Art Linson. Screenplay by Robert Getchell and Alexandra Seros, based on Luc Besson’s “Nikita.” Cinematographer Michael Watkins. Editor Frank Morriss. Costumes Marlene Stewart. Music Hans Zimmer. Production design Phillip Harrison. Art director Sydney Z. Litwack. Set decorator Julia Laughlin. Running time: 1 hour, 49 minutes.

MPAA-rated R (strong violence, and for language and sexuality).