Léon: The Professional
Léon: The Professional
R | 18 November 1994 (USA)
Léon: The Professional Trailers

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.

Reviews
Cubussoli

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

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Connianatu

How wonderful it is to see this fine actress carry a film and carry it so beautifully.

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Tayloriona

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

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Lachlan Coulson

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

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ashington-20993

Im not going to go into detail about Leon, for those who haven't seen this legend of a movie.Stick it on sit down and enjoy, and you will enjoy trust me.

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habib_khodadad

There are enough gun slinging scenes here to somewhat satisfy the average joe who fiends for action, but this movie doesn't use just senseless violence to push the plot forward. Life as a killer and as a child rendezvouz here unexpectedly, an inveterate killer and a child who resembles a sacred innocence meeting each other to form an unlikely relationship. The child's life has already been tainted with violence and subsequent tragedies, but the killer father figure tries to shield her eyes from any further damage. The killer plays an emotionless man who preys on those who have rubbed people the wrong way. He is the archangel and the death angel, holding the dual responsibility of keeping peace in the child's life and also going about his normal routine of dispatching his foes. The child is a girl named Mathilda, played by Natalie Portman, and she is a symbol of a childhood robbed of its idyllic backdrop, and changed forever by a Landscape of apathy and violence. Her life begins to take a chaotic turns as she accepts the protection of Leon, an emotionless killer who performs his tasks like a robot but is determined to protect the child from harm. Realizing that the child's life has already been contorted by her exposure to violence and tragedies, he only hopes to amends by protecting her from any more harm.

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Kmb_the_Nepali_reviewer

It is one of the most overrated movies of all times. I don't mean it's bad, but it's not as great as people claim it to be. It is a good and a little different type of crime drama. But, speaking of 90s crime dramas and mob films, "Goodfellas", "Pulp Fiction", "The Usual Suspects", "Se7en", "Reservoir Dogs", etc are much better than this movie, at least for me. But still a lot better majority of crime movies today. The main theme - the relationship between Leon and Mathilda - mostly satisfying and very well written and directed. That is something I really loved. But at the same time, a part of that relationship is quite a mixed bag for me. (SPOILERS) Mathilda falls in love with Leon and asks him for intimacy. As much as I admire Besson's decision, it feels unusually weird. Plus, Natalie Portman was just around 12 or 13 years old, and there were some perverted shots of her in the movie that I didn't really want to see. The Leon-Mathilda plotline, except for this part, was quite good. And which means almost more than a half of the movie was good. Mathilda becoming a hitman plotline - the motivation felt a little forced to me, her training sessions were finely entertaining but ..... where and how did it really end? More than becoming a real hitman (probably she did in the montage sequence) we only get to see her do some crazy teenager stuffs. And, one of my biggest issues - Mathilda wanting a revenge on Stan plotline. It would have been a better movie if this one and the first plotline I mentioned were equally a major part of the movie. But, the movie deviates from this a lot. We get reminded about this part when Gary Oldman shows up. This was one of the main parts of the plot, but didn't really feel like one. Also, Stan is a simple crazy psycho-ish villain with nothing much of depth to him. The first plotline worked for me in the way it did, mostly because of the amazing performances of Jean Reno and Natalie Portman. They were very great. Leon was written very carefully. And ........ Gary Oldman ......... I love the man as an actor, he is amazing in most of the his movies I have watched. May be his performances in "Darkest Hour" and as Commissioner Gordon in Dark Knight Trilogy are my favorite Gary Oldman performances. I haven't seen all of his movies, but this is by far the worst Gary Oldman performance I have ever seen. A part of it is to be blamed on Besson, but nothing can be taken away from Oldman. He simply hams up the performance. On the whole, it's a very enjoyable movie and has it's goods and has it's flaws. Not bad at all. It's good. But it feels like hypocrisy to have this movie as the 30th highest rated movie on IMDb. It gets a "B" and a "6.7/10".

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Red-Barracuda

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.

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