Leon: The Professional (1994) Review

 

Léon: The Professional (1994)

Léon: The Professional follows Mathilda, who joins forces with a reluctant hitman to avenge her family’s murder at the hands of a crooked DEA agent. 

Léon is a lonely and tortured soul. He lives in squalor and misery, never truly happy or at peace with himself and practically lives from kill to kill. He is a simplistic, childlike man who fears one thing above all else—change. That change comes in the form of Mathilda, a somewhat mature (for a 12 year old) girl who just had her family brutally murdered right down the hall from Léon. So begins one of the weirdest but more memorable relationships in movie history. Now I won’t lie, I’ve let this one ruminate all day—I don’t particularly like the aspect of their relationship being one of romantic involvement (especially with Portman genuinely being 11 years old at the time), but it’s a relationship that I understand. They are united by being totally and hopelessly alone in this world and for a girl like Mathilda, who had to grow up way too quick, she just wants to live and be loved. 

Paired with their rather complicated relationship is also is surprisingly action heavy story that makes a bonafide badass out of Jean Reno. Remarkably though, it’s worked into the story to feel really natural, as Léon is a hitman first, guardian second (unlike Taken or Red, or whatever type of weird genre that is). Léon’s death particularly stands out as one of the most artful and fist pumping deaths I’ve likely ever seen. 

We get a solid cast here as well, featuring Danny Aiello, Gary Oldman, Natalie Portman, and Jean Reno. Oldman is at his sadistic, malevolent best here, as usual. The pairing of Reno and Portman is peculiar because both are great in their own respective ways in this, adding much to each other’s performances, though their relationship did have me at my own moral odds. 

Léon: The Professional, directed by Luc Besson, is an intimate and rather simplistic film that puts a heavy emphasis on raw, very human performances, a style that is rare to see in modern cinema anymore. 

8/10