Leon: The Professional (1994)
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Leon: The Professional Movie Review
Leon: The Professional is a 1994 action thriller film directed by Luc Besson and starring Jean Reno and Natalie Portman. It’s a flawed, but very memorable and fun movie.
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“It’s my best friend.
Always happy.
No questions“
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After her family is murdered, Mathilda, a 12-year-old girl, is reluctantly taken in by Leon, a professional assassin. Mathilda soon becomes his protégé and takes up the assassin’s trade. This is a standard Luc Besson movie in that it’s stylishly shot, very well scored and structurally and tonally complicated and/or messy. There are a couple of different genres and tones going on in this story, not fully coalescing into a coherent whole, but making for an interesting viewing experience for sure.
The movie is iconic for the incredible performance from Natalie Portman. The fact that she was only 13 when she made this movie and she still was the best part of it was insane. It just goes to show that she has been an outstanding actress from the very beginning. Portman is so good that Jean Reno himself could not compare. And her character was also much more interesting than his, but their dynamic was very entertaining and so well explored.
Gary Oldman was excellent and quite over-the-top in a fun villainous turn. The movie benefits from memorable, if not fully developed characters and strong interactions between them. The action scenes worked, though at times they were a bit too implausible in their situations.
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Leon: The Professional is at its best when it’s just about the central relationship between Leon and Mathilda and it’s a shame that this section wasn’t longer. Some sections of the movie seriously dragged as the film needed stronger pacing and a shorter runtime, but the kinetic energy, very good directing and even at times charming humor helped transcend its obvious flaws. It’s one of the better Luc Besson movies for sure and one of the most purely entertaining and endearing, but I wished that it could have properly balanced all of its disparate tones and threads.
Leon: The Professional is one of the better Luc Besson movies. Though disparate in tone and structure, the movie is mostly very engaging. Gary Oldman and Jean Reno were both excellent, but it was Natalie Portman who really stole the show here, displaying great talent at a very young age. The character interactions and dialogue were the film’s absolute highlights while some implausible action and an overlong runtime were its main detractors.
My Rating – 4
This is the ninth film in my 4our series where I will cover one film per decade that is having an anniversary this year, from 1914 to 2014. Next up is the year 2004 where I chose The Aviator. Keep an eye on that one as well.
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