In my previous post, I wrote about the worst commercial I've ever seen. I thought the commercial was terrible because it tried too hard to affect its audience and tell a detailed story in only one minute. Then I compared it to a short film which had a similar subject matter, which was directed by Luc Besson.
Luc Besson is one of the favorite filmmakers, for so many reasons. Firstly, he was one of the first filmmakers I ever knew about in my childhood, before I ever really cared about film directors. Movies like Léon The Professional, The Fifth Element, Arthur And The Invisibles, and The Transporter Series were my favorite movies growing up.
The films that Luc Besson directed are all unique in their own ways. He rarely ever directs a movie that's similar to what he's already directed before, and none of them were made just for the sake of money. The ones he writes and produces like Taken 2 and 3 are obviously for the money, but the money's always going towards his production company, so that he has enough money to help other filmmakers like Gary Oldman and Tommy Lee Jones.
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| Not sure why he's shirtless here, but he knows what he's doing. |
My previous posts were about my thoughts on certain movies and commercials, which differed from popular opinions. I said The Deer Hunter was terrible despite being a highly regarded classic, I said Crash (2004) was a great movie despite being considered as the worst Best Picture Oscar winner, and I said a serious car crash commercial was the worst commercial I ever saw. Knowing this, I decided to make this post about a movie that everyone genuinely likes. It's currently the 27th highest rated movie on IMDb, and rightfully so. Léon The Professional is one of the greatest movies ever made.
NOTE: This review contains spoilers. This film is a must-see, and if you haven't seen it yet, please watch it. Even if you already know the plot spoilers, just watch it. It's incredible.
One of the things that Léon The Professional excels at is its characterization. Most thrillers don't have any unique characters. Léon The Professional has not one, not two, but three unique characters: Léon, Mathilda, and Norman Stansfield.
Lets start off with Léon. It's coincidental that Léon The Professional came out the same year as Pulp Fiction, because both films were about hitmen, and both of them subverted the stereotypes you'd expect from other movies about hitmen. Pulp Fiction's hitmen had regular conversations about pop culture and their interests, while the eponymous character in Léon The Professional waters his plant, watches Gene Kelly movies, and he's quite gullible too. He can kill you easily, but he relies on others and isn't good at handling uncomfortable situations.
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| He's an expert assassin, yet it's pretty easy to catch him off-guard if you tell him you love him. |
His chemistry with Mathilda is great too. Mathilda is a 12 year old girl who's well beyond her years: She smokes, she swears, and she's not afraid to reveal her true emotions to others. In the theatrical cut of the film, her relationship with Léon is much more tame, yet in the extended edition, she's a lot more flirtatious. People say Léon The Professional had pedophilic undertones, but that's not true at all. Whenever Mathilda flirts with Léon, Léon feels really uncomfortable. It's like Mathilda is the mature one, while Leon is the kid. Jean Reno said he performed Léon as mentally slow and prudish, so that audiences didn't think his character had any sexual interests in Mathilda.
And then there's Norman Stansfield. I will admit that he's a far more conventional character than Léon and Mathilda, but there are still aspects to him that make him stand out. The mysterious pills he eats, his interest in Beethoven, and the way Gary Oldman performed this character is what makes him so memorable.
All the performances are great. Luc Besson wrote Léon The Professional with Jean Reno in mind, who played as a hitman in Luc Besson's previous film, La Femme Nikita. There's no other actor who could have played Léon as perfectly as Jean Reno did. Gary Oldman always delivers great performances, as you'd expect from him. Danny Aiello is perfectly cast too, and delivers all his lines with charm.
And then there's Natalie Portman. Mathilda is one of the most difficult roles you could ever write for a child actor, because the role requires an actor who can portray a sense of maturity with a sense of naïveté. Most child actors aren't even good at playing simple roles, like this one. The producer of Léon The Professional told Besson to make the character older, so that it would be easier to cast the role. Besson refused to compromise, which meant the film never would have existed, or it wouldn't be the classic it is today without Natalie Portman. It was her debut performance in a feature film, and it was the performance of a lifetime. If she screwed it up, it could have ruined her career. It's pretty obvious that she didn't screw up at all, because the movie she did after Léon The Professional was Heat, another classic movie. Child actors are known for struggling to transition to being adult actors, yet that wasn't a struggle for Natalie Portman at all. Just like Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver, she already played a mature role as a kid.
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| Nothing could ruin her career. Not even this. |
Compared to other film genres, thrillers usually lack replay value. Once you already know what happens in a thriller, it's not as exciting the second time you see it. I've seen Léon The Professional at least seven times, and it's still entertaining. That's because the characters in this film stood the test of time.
Léon The Professional is one of those movies that's so well made, so enjoyable and so unique that it deserves the highest rating I can give. It's one of the greatest movies ever made, that anyone with an open mind can enjoy.
10/10
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