Jean Reno, Gary Oldman, Natalie Portman and Danny Aiello star in Leon: The Professional, a go-for-broke thriller about a professional assassin whose work becomes dangerously personal. Calling himself a “cleaner”, the mysterious Leon (Reno) is New York’s top hitman. When his next-door neighbors are murdered, Leon becomes the unwilling guardian of the family’s sole survivor – 12-year-old Mathilda (Natalie Portman), but Mathilda doesn’t just want protection; she wants revenge. Training her in the deadly tricks of his trade, Leon helps her track the psychotic agent (Oldman) who murdered her family.Luc Besson (TheFifth Element) made his American directorial debut with this stylized thriller about an Italian hit man (Jean Reno) who takes in an American girl (Natalie Portman) being pursued by a corrupt killer cop (Gary Oldman). Oldman is a little more unhinged than he should be, but there is something genuinely irresistible about the story line and the relationship between Reno and Portman. Rather than cave in to the cookie-cutter look and feel of American action pictures, Besson brings a bit of his glossy style from French hits La Femme Nikita and Subway to the production, and the results are refreshing even if the bullets and explosions are awfully familiar. –Tom Keogh
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January 23, 2006
#1
This movie sucks .. The professional is the most unprofessional hitman ever … the girl is one damn precocious teenager …the idea of a hitman teaching a frail kid to be like him is laughable .. and the way leon fights hundreds of policemen at the end and picks off 6 guys at the beginning show him as some supernatural killer ! The way Leon gets into the police HQ and shoots around is ridiculous ..I thought such stuff was only NEO’s ( as in the MATRIX) preserve. The only redeeming aspects are the last shootout in the hotel and the villain when he pops his pill and cranes his neck .. man that is creepy. Even his character is almost reduced to a buffon when he starts talking rubbish about Beethoven and Mozart.
In other words , STAY AWAY from this lousy movie. Spend the evening watching any Chow Yun Fat movie instead.
January 24, 2006
#2
The only thing professional about this forced march through artistically lacking wasteland was the acuteness of which it leaves the audience utterly disillusioned and confused. A good shot Reno may be, but a professional hitman he is not. A hitman to such professional degree as the movie tries in hopeless vain to portray him as would not be living in such a dump, nor would he be making such measly salaries for executing the high-profile mob bosses he does. I myself am not a mercinary gun-for-hire, nor do I know any, so maybe I’m way off…but an educated guess would lead me to believe that a world-class crackshot would have to lead a lifestyle a bit more MOBILE. That is, unless, one can make a sniper’s living for 30+ years off prospective targets confined to New York City. I suppose Reno has an endless supply of mafia kingpins his boss wants dead, right?
What’s with the plants? This guy’s career path lands him commiting murder after bloody murder, but he gets home and all his suppressed emotions just pour out into home gardening?
Nor could I easily overlook … Reno’s twisted, perverted “love affair” with Natalie Portman (how old is she again? Twelve?) is sick. At least Kevin Spacey in “American Beauty” fell for a high school senior.
And Reno teaching Portman how to use a sniper rifle in the middle of Central Park? Anyone notice this going on? Anyone see Portman shooting paintballs at some nameless but seemingly important man who just happens to be walking through the park surrounded by bodyguards? This is New York City, not Mogadishu.
Yawn…..anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, the movie is stupid and unbelievable. If you’re into grown men lusting grade school girls though, this is right up your alley.
January 24, 2006
#3
Found myself wanting to put a bullet through Leons head at the end of this movie…well if he still had a head.
Very unreal movie and that doesnt have to be a bad thing normaly but well…not if its meant to be like reality.
January 24, 2006
#4
I just watched the professional a couple of months ago. And i didn’t see any of the love story. If you’ve seen this movie and you seen Matilda and leon as lovers then i bet your a huge fan of John Mark Kar, and child pornagraphy. I mean come on shes twelve and he’s what pushing 40. But i do have to admit Matildas a pretty creepy kid. But whenever she comes on to him it gets really awkward and he seems afraid of her. And all the flaws in this is kind of sad. Nobody notices how crazy the cop is. And leon kills a dozen not just cops but a swat team with two hand guns oh while hanging upside down. Can you imagine how many times he dropped the guns during takes. What is he superman always dissapearing and reappearing during his hits. And why weren’t there any reporters i mean come on. Cops killed, shootouts in the middle of new york, a aparment building being blownup. I know new yorks a pretty bad place but not one freakin reporter. Then theres matilda shooting out the window and nobody calls the cops. And what up the cops killing matildas whole family. THe force didn’t even do a real invastigation. They should of suspended there badges untill they got to the bottom of it. Because I’m so sure a four yr old is such a threat.
January 24, 2006
#5
French director Luc Besson probably knows more about America than he did when he made *Leon/The Professional* eight years ago. If he made this film today, he’d know better than to make his hitman hero English-illiterate. (Can’t kill people if you can’t read their home address. Couldn’t get a decent “straight” job as your “cover”. Need I go on?) He’d know that a “professional” hitman would surely demand more than five measly G’s per hit. He’d know that the hitman would NEVER leave all his earnings in the care of his boss while simultaneously living in non-secure — to say nothing of uncomfortable — flophouses. But, being the post-New Wave Frenchie that he is, he’d probably STILL have the hitman use the alias “Mr. MacGuffin” — after all, even the post-New Wavers can’t resist making self-referential cinema “in-jokes”. And he’d still insist that the hitman be a fan of Gene Kelly movies. (Brainlessly, Besson “hommages” what the French movie magazine “Cahiers du Cinema” used to praise — Hitchcock and MGM musicals — back when Truffaut and Godard were its editors. 40-odd years ago.) And he’d still needlessly [fantasize] the 12-year-old girl who becomes the hitman’s partner. Comparisons to Nabokov are inapt, by the way: Jean Reno’s hitman ain’t no Humbert Humbert. He’s barely more than a child himself, what with his illiteracy, naivety, and incessant milk-drinking. Because of this, we sophisticates can evidently relax about their nature of their relationship. (“Oh, it’s not for REALS, dahhling. Pour me some more Cold Duck.”) Comparing this movie to *Paper Moon* is probably more accurate, but doing so only creates a desire to see that movie instead of this noisy, ineptly conceived mess.