Léon

Léon
Official promotional poster
Directed by	Luc Besson
Produced by	Patrice Ledoux
Written by	Luc Besson
Starring	Jean Reno Gary Oldman Natalie Portman and Danny Aiello
Music by	Éric Serra
Cinematography	Thierry Arbogast
Editing by	Sylvie Landra
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures Gaumont Film Company
Release date(s)	France: 14 September 1994 United States: 18 November 1994
Running time	Theatrical cut: 110 minutes Director's cut 133 minutes International cut: 136 minutes
Country	France
Language	English
Budget	$16 million[citation needed]
Gross revenue	$19,501,238 (USA) [1]

Léon (also known as The Professional and Léon: The Professional) is a French English-language 1994 thriller film written and directed by French director Luc Besson. It stars Jean Reno, Gary Oldman, and a young Natalie Portman in her feature film debut.

Plot

Léon (Jean Reno) is a hitman (or "cleaner" as he would rather be known) living a solitary life in New York City's Little Italy. Most of his work comes from a mafioso named Tony (Danny Aiello), who operates from the "Supreme Macaroni Company" retail store. Léon spends his idle time engaging in calisthenics, nurturing a houseplant that early on he describes as his "best friend",^[2] and (in one scene) watching old Gene Kelly musicals.

On a particular day on his way home, he sees Mathilda Lando (Natalie Portman), a twelve-year-old girl with a black eye and smoking a cigarette, living with her dysfunctional family in an apartment down the hallway. Mathilda's father (Michael Badalucco) attracts the ire of corrupt DEA agents, who have been paying him to store cocaine in his residence, after they discover that he has been stealing some of the drugs for himself. A cadre of DEA agents storm the building, led by a ragged and drug-addicted Norman "Stan" Stansfield (Gary Oldman), murders Mathilda's entire family, missing her only because she was out shopping when they arrived. When she returns with the groceries she was sent to buy and notices the carnage, she calmly continues down the hallway past the open door of her family's apartment, and receives sanctuary from a reluctant Léon.

Mathilda, who soon discovers that Léon is a hitman, begs him to become her caretaker, and to teach her his skills as a "cleaner": she wants to avenge the murder of her four-year-old brother, the only member of her family that she actually loved. In return, she offers herself as a maid and teacher, remedying Léon's illiteracy. Léon hesitantly accepts her offer and the two begin working together, slowly building an emotional attachment, with Léon becoming a friend and father figure. As they work together, Mathilda admits to Léon several times that she is falling in love with him, but he says nothing back.

As Mathilda increases her confidence and experience, she locates Stansfield, follows him to his office in the DEA building in an attempt to kill him, only to be ambushed by Stansfield in a bathroom. Léon, discovering her intentions after reading a note left for him by Mathilda, rushes to the building and rescues her, shooting two of Stansfield's men in the process.

Stansfield is enraged that what he calls the "Italian hitman" has gone rogue and is killing his men. He confronts Tony and threatens him, eventually beating him into surrendering Léon's whereabouts. Later, as Mathilda returns home from grocery shopping, an NYPD ESU team, sent by Stansfield, takes her hostage and attempts to infiltrate Léon's apartment. Léon ambushes the ESU team and takes one of their members hostage, rapidly bartering him for Mathilda's freedom. As they slink back into the apartment, Léon creates a quick escape for Matilda as he reassures her and tells her that he loves her moments before they come for him.

In the chaos that follows, Léon sneaks out of the apartment building disguised as a wounded ESU officer, almost unnoticed save for Stansfield who recognizes him and silently sneaks up and shoots him from behind. Looming over the dying Léon, Stansfield jeers him haughtily. However just before he gives out, Léon places an object in Stansfield's hands, which he explains is "from Mathilda". Opening his hands, Stansfield recognizes it as the pin from a grenade and rips open Léon's vest to discover several grenades on his chest. Stansfield lets out a brief and final quip "Oh, shit" right before a massive explosion devastates them both.

Mathilda heads to Tony's place as she was instructed to do by Léon. Tony will not give Mathilda more than a few dollars of the fortune Léon had amassed, which was being held by Tony. His reasoning is that she is not old enough to receive the large amount of money and that school should be her priority until she's older. When Mathilda asks Tony to give her a 'job', and insists that she can 'clean' as Léon had, Tony sternly informs her that he 'ain't got no work for a 12-year-old kid!' Having nowhere else to go, she is then seen going to Roosevelt Island using the Roosevelt Island Tramway. The next day, she returns to school in NJ. Seemingly readmitted to the school, Mathilda walks into a field in front of it with Léon's houseplant in hand, she digs a hole and plants the houseplant in the grounds of the school, as she had told Léon he should, "to give it roots."

Léon & Mathilda's apartment building on the northwest corner of E 97th St & Park Ave (February 2005)

Production

Léon is to some extent an expansion of an idea in Besson's earlier film, Nikita (1990), in which Jean Reno played a similar character named Victor. Besson described Léon as "Now maybe Jean is playing the American cousin of Victor. This time he's more human."^[3]

While most of the interior footage was shot in France, the rest of the film was shot on location in New York City.^[4]

Critical response

The film was well-received critically and commercially. On Rottentomatoes.com, the film is "certified fresh" with an aggregate rating of 74 percent based on 38. The film is ranked Number 34 on IMDB's top 250 movies.^[5][6]

Mathilda Lando

Roger Ebert offered a mostly positive review, but wrote: "Always at the back of my mind was the troubled thought that there was something wrong about placing a 12-year-old character in the middle of this action." "In what is essentially an exercise - a slick urban thriller - it seems to exploit the youth of the girl without really dealing with it."

There were several parenting groups at the time of the film's release who found the relationship between Mathilda and Leon highly objectionable. Several talk show guests felt that the film condoned the type of older man/young girl relationship represented in the film and would 'influence' younger viewers to 'emulate' Mathilda and some of her more extreme behavior. A caveat that rarely seemed to enter the debate at the time was that the film was rated R and the younger viewers who would be 'influenced', wouldn't have been allowed to view the film without a parent. The edits done for the US release (included in the 'European' version) are most likely an attempt to make the film more marketable in the US market by toning down the relationship.

Gary Oldman's performance

Oldman's performance as corrupt DEA officer Norman Stansfield divided critical opinion upon the film's release, with some commending it and others criticizing it as over-the-top. Richard Schickel, for example, praised the performance as "divinely psychotic,"^[7] while the Deseret News' Chris Hicks, one of its many detractors, called it "utterly ridiculous."^[8] Director Luc Besson was pleased with the performance, leading to his hiring Oldman for 1997's The Fifth Element.^[9] In 2002, Stansfield was ranked #43 in the Online Film Critics Society's "Top 100 Villains of All Time."^[10]

Long version

There is also a long version of the film, referred to as "international version" or "version intégrale". It is sometimes called the "Director's Cut" but Besson refers to the original version as the Director's Cut and the new version as "The Long Version". It is also called the "international version" as only this version was released in Japan.^[11]

It has approximately 23 minutes of additional footage that was removed from the original release. The additional material is found in the film's second act, and it depicts more of the interactions and relationship between Léon and Mathilda. In one scene, Mathilda plays Russian roulette to try to get Léon to admit he loves her; in another, she openly asks him to be her first lover, but he refuses, although they do innocently share a bed. In another scene he teaches Mathilda the "Ring Trick" which involves knocking on people's door and breaking the chain after the occupant opens the door, and in the event of the occupant fighting back or refusing to open, throwing a grenade inside (when he does, he shows Mathilda the pin). There is also a detailed scene in which Léon teaches Mathilda where to shoot the target, using a cocaine dealer to show her, and how one should never shoot at the face, because doing so would render identification impossible. After he kills the dealer Mathilda burns all the drugs using isopropyl alcohol. He also refers to a past romantic relationship he once had that ended in tragedy and started his career as a hitman. Most of the other material in the longer cut involves Mathilda accompanying Léon on several of his hits, to further her training.

The "version longue" of Léon was shown in 1996 in French cinemas (followed by VHS), and released—as "version intégrale"—on LaserDisc and later Region 2 DVD in Japan. It appeared as the "international version" on Region 1 DVD in North America in 2000, and was re-issued in 2005. It was first released in the United Kingdom in 2009 as the 'Director's Cut'.

References

External links

• Léon at the Internet Movie Database
• Léon at Allmovie
• Léon (film) at Box Office Mojo
• Léon at Rotten Tomatoes

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