Directed by:
Luc BessonScreenplay:
Luc BessonCinematography:
Thierry ArbogastComposer:
Eric SerraCast:
Jean Reno, Gary Oldman, Natalie Portman, Danny Aiello, Peter Appel, Willi One Blood, Michael Badalucco, Ellen Greene, Elizabeth Regen, Frank Senger, Maïwenn (more)VOD (3)
Plots(1)
An orphaned girl takes shelter with a neighbor she knows slightly. Leon is a professional hit man who's never had a reason to care about anybody, but Natalie has no one else. They form a makeshift father-daughter bond that changes both of their lives. (official distributor synopsis)
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Reviews (10)
If I ever wrote a story about a hit man, I'd probably want it to look like this. Action-packed, gritty, yet human and powerfully emotional. Moreover, there are excellent characters here, brought to life beautifully by quirks, like milk or some pills. Luc Besson showed why he is such a great filmmaker with this one. It's a shame it doesn't quite fulfill that today.
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Besson's The Professional is one of those nonchalant films that very cleverly and imaginatively combines the "old school" with new techniques and together manage to create a fabulous work that, in addition to brilliant filmmaking, abounds with "that something extra" – an inner feeling, flair, or simply strong emotional "capital" that I can't explain or define exactly, but I can recognize very clearly when watching it:) I love the fact that even when Besson uses genre elements (clichés?) from other masters (Tarantino, Scorsese, De Palma, Coppola), he manages to combine them just as masterfully, and where the genre cliché begins and ends, he calmly creates a field of his own overlap and stuns with his creativity. An uncommonly well made and sensitive film. One of the best I’ve ever seen.
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Luc Besson used to write great scripts and turn them into fantastic movies. This was not just an ordinary action thriller but also an exciting drama about a somewhat autistic professional assassin and his prepubescent almost-apprentice. I enjoyed it again, just like I did almost thirty years ago. It was, hands down, Natalie Portman's best role and one of Jean Reno's best roles. Jean Reno was great in the roles of disturbed assassins, just like Gary Oldman was with his psychopaths. Maybe they suited them too much because they both got typecast in them. True, the story wasn't exactly a brain exercise, but without torture, I admit that I didn't care at all because I really enjoyed the central, strongly mismatched duo. There was definitely a certain nostalgia involved. / Lesson learned: Take extra care of your best friend.
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I'm not a big fan of action movies, but Leon offers something much different and deeper besides shooting, blood and killing. Alongside the hunt for the bad guys, we get a glimpse of the strange but incredibly strong relationship between a young intellectual girl and a cold-blooded killer. And both of their lives will change completely from the ground up when they meet and start living together. This film excels especially in terms of acting. Jean Reno is simply a likable man with charisma to spare, who can play a ruthless "cleaner" as well as a caring "parent". Natalie Portman was already very talented at the time and her acting can be compared to child stars such as Haley Joel Osment or Abigail Breslin. Gary Oldman has always been good villain roles and this is no exception. In short, a wonderful cinematic gem from France that offers some pretty thrilling action scenes alongside the actors and a strong story.
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It's interesting that of the three biggest directorial toys of the 90s, (Besson, Jeunet, Gilliam), each managed to build their own hebephilic magnum opus (The Professional, The City of Lost Children, Tideland), which is quite creepy at certain points, however much the viewer tries to accept the narrative innocence. I'm not saying I'm offended by this, I'm just mentioning for future adventures that this film will one day undergo some clever revision that fans won't like. But The Professional has plenty of other things to admire apart from the main relationship. The first thing you can see in it is Besson's gratitude that he finally made it to the States, and his fascination with the vastness and vibrancy of 90s New York. The battered old flats, the sweaty hotels, the tangle of corridors, subways, and staircases, the wild streets, the clutter, the mobs of people, and the anamorphic lenses of the cameras that capture it all. Even Serra this time seems to have realized he's actually doing the music for a film, and The Professional's "godfather" motif adds an unexpected layer of darkness to this much-stylized film (not least because it keeps bringing the protagonist back to his difficult Italian past). The shot alone when Matilda and Léon go up to the roof of the building above Central Park, the scene opens up into a vast expanse in which we watch that giant city, and dramatic loops swirl in the background. Incidentally, one of the proofs of Besson's early directorial wizardry is that everyone, even those who have just finished watching the film, is convinced that The Professional is an action movie, among other things. Yet it does not contain so much as a single action scene.
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