Léon: The Professional

Besson's The Professional is one of those nonchalant films that very cleverly and imaginatively combines the "old school" with new techniques and together manage to create a fabulous work that, in addition to brilliant filmmaking, abounds with "that something extra" – an inner feeling, flair, or simply strong emotional "capital" that I can't explain or define exactly, but I can recognize very clearly when watching it:) I love the fact that even when Besson uses genre elements (clichés?) from other masters (Tarantino, Scorsese, De Palma, Coppola), he manages to combine them just as masterfully, and where the genre cliché begins and ends, he calmly creates a field of his own overlap and stuns with his creativity. An uncommonly well made and sensitive film. One of the best I’ve ever seen. (06/20/2011)

During the flood of films of both better and worse quality, one rarely has the opportunity to return to what they have already seen, and I personally only do it with films that I remember as remarkable and strong. I saw this film during its premiere in the mid-90s, and even though I wasn't a teenager anymore, it impressed me as a cleverly and impressively directed popcorn movie with an excellent cast and an emotionally perfectly functioning screenplay. The film hasn't changed, but the genre has gone through rapid development, and above all, I have changed, so this kind of action genre doesn't affect me the way it did years ago. Nowadays, I prefer a dynamic and realistic style, like the one director Greengrass promotes, so my favorite films include the Bourne trilogy, Green Zone, and Blood Diamond. Luc Besson's films are overly marked by the effort to cater to a mass audience, so they are naive, unrealistic, almost comic book-like, sometimes sentimental, and overall calculated. What remains is an excellent cast, with Jean Reno creating a star status for himself after a significant minor role in La Femme Nikita and being catapulted among the best French actors at a relatively mature age, and also gaining a few roles in Hollywood. Gary Oldman, on the other hand, created the wonderful character of a perversely debauched corrupt cop, who holds an honorable place in his gallery of villains. Young Natalie Portman also showed in this film why she would become a world-famous film celebrity in a few years. Overall impression: 55%. (06/14/2006)

Luc Besson used to write great scripts and turn them into fantastic movies. This was not just an ordinary action thriller but also an exciting drama about a somewhat autistic professional assassin and his prepubescent almost-apprentice. I enjoyed it again, just like I did almost thirty years ago. It was, hands down, Natalie Portman's best role and one of Jean Reno's best roles. Jean Reno was great in the roles of disturbed assassins, just like Gary Oldman was with his psychopaths. Maybe they suited them too much because they both got typecast in them. True, the story wasn't exactly a brain exercise, but without torture, I admit that I didn't care at all because I really enjoyed the central, strongly mismatched duo. There was definitely a certain nostalgia involved. / Lesson learned: Take extra care of your best friend. (03/17/2023)

The delicately portrayed yet wonderfully performed relationship between Reno and Portman is flawless. Besson stayed true to himself in his first Hollywood film and Leon retained his French esprit. Gary Oldman's performance as a psychopathic thug and lover of classical music is unforgettable. Eric Serra also outdid himself and created a lovely soundtrack (he forgot about it again in The Fifth Element). (04/12/2003)

It's interesting that of the three biggest directorial toys of the 90s, (Besson, Jeunet, Gilliam), each managed to build their own hebephilic magnum opus (The Professional, The City of Lost Children, Tideland), which is quite creepy at certain points, however much the viewer tries to accept the narrative innocence. I'm not saying I'm offended by this, I'm just mentioning for future adventures that this film will one day undergo some clever revision that fans won't like. But The Professional has plenty of other things to admire apart from the main relationship. The first thing you can see in it is Besson's gratitude that he finally made it to the States, and his fascination with the vastness and vibrancy of 90s New York. The battered old flats, the sweaty hotels, the tangle of corridors, subways, and staircases, the wild streets, the clutter, the mobs of people, and the anamorphic lenses of the cameras that capture it all. Even Serra this time seems to have realized he's actually doing the music for a film, and The Professional's "godfather" motif adds an unexpected layer of darkness to this much-stylized film (not least because it keeps bringing the protagonist back to his difficult Italian past). The shot alone when Matilda and Léon go up to the roof of the building above Central Park, the scene opens up into a vast expanse in which we watch that giant city, and dramatic loops swirl in the background. Incidentally, one of the proofs of Besson's early directorial wizardry is that everyone, even those who have just finished watching the film, is convinced that The Professional is an action movie, among other things. Yet it does not contain so much as a single action scene. (08/18/2021)