Léon: The Professional (1994)
Léon, the top hit man in New York, has earned a rep as an effective "cleaner". But when his next-door neighbors are wiped out by a loose-cannon DEA agent, he becomes the unwilling custodian of 12-year-old Mathilda. Before long, Mathilda's thoughts turn to revenge, and she considers following in Léon's footsteps.
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Best movie ever!
A different way of telling a story
There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.
It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.
Clearly the best Besson's movie.Jean Reno and Natalie Portman make it seems so real and Gary Oldman is amazing.
I usually don't like stylish action movies but this one is different. The film catches viewer's complete attention in just 25 minutes. After that , the storyline proceeds gradually . Till end we develop a kind of love for that character Leon(Or maybe pity on Mathilda) . It is a character whose death hurted me the most . While watching , I was praying for this life . All characters are written very well. Whole film is well written , well directed and brilliantly acted. But , this film left some questions unanswered.First question is about Gary Oldman's character (Stanfield). How does he enjoy so much power in New York police . He is in drug department and not in the police. Second and even bigger question , who were the people that they killed during the practice. Were they normal people , very unlikely . But if they were enemies , how was stansfield unaware of it. Even if I ignore these points , this film still is not perfect . Middle part of the movie was a little boring . All that happened is Mathilda confessed her love for Leon . Don't know how many times . So much time is wasted on this rather than building some storyline. Overall an entertaining film.
This movie caught me way off guard in theaters back in 1994, and it impressed me even more again on a rewatch. Luc Besson's greatest film, and this, from someone who was obsessed with The Big Blue and watched it way too many times.Gary Oldman, in what is probably his most evil and fascinating character, Natalie Portman slaying us all in her film debut and Jean Reno's best role ever. What more could you want?Hypnotic and emotional, action packed and brutal, sweet and beautiful.Éric Serra provides the score, and it reminds me so much of his score for Goldeneye, which I had not yet seen yet back when I first saw The Professional. He even wrote a song for The Professional end credits that got cut in favor of a Sting song, which wound up used in the Goldeneye end credits, "The Experience of Love."
When her family are slaughtered by a corrupt DEA officer and his men, a 12 year old girl takes refuge in a neighbour's apartment. A neighbour who it turns out is a professional hitman. She soon convinces him to train her to be his protégée.This was French director Luc Besson's first American movie. It is a follow up of sorts to his earlier chic action-thriller Nikita (1990), with Jean Reno essentially reprising his role of a cleaner (professional assassin), although in this one he is playing a different actually character. Like all Besson's movies there is considerable style brought to the table with the action sequences once again particularly well-delivered. But perhaps the true revelation of the movie is Natalie Portman who puts in an extremely strong performance for such a young actress, full of charisma, humour and emotional depth. She plays off well against Reno, who is also impressive. Gary Oldman, on the other hand, is pretty grating and annoying mostly as the main villain, a character who is cartoonish and somewhat ridiculous overall.While I do find this film good quality for the most part, with great action sequences and some interesting characterisations, I have to express serious reservations about the director's cut, where Portman's young character is constantly trying to get Reno to sleep with her. Its majorly uncomfortable stuff and really entirely unnecessary. And while Léon does spurn her advances, it's never really very clear that he rejects her for entirely the right reasons. Seemingly in the original script, the characters do actually end up sleeping together, which we can only be grateful never actually made the final cut but it does make you wonder what Besson was thinking with all this questionable stuff. My advice would be to avoid the director's cut and watch this one in the trimmed version, which removes all this contentious material.