| Léon | |
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Official promotional poster |
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| Directed by | Luc Besson |
| Produced by | Patrice Ledoux |
| Written by | Luc Besson |
| Starring | Jean Reno Gary Oldman Natalie Portman Danny Aiello |
| Music by | Éric Serra |
| Cinematography | Thierry Arbogast |
| Editing by | Sylvie Landra |
| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures Gaumont Film Company |
| Release date(s) | 14 September 1994 (France) 18 November 1994 (United States) |
| Running time | Theatrical cut: 110 minutes Director's cut 133 minutes International cut: 136 minutes |
| Country | United States France |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $16 million[1] |
| Box office | $45,284,974[1][2] |
Léon (also known as The Professional and Léon: The Professional) is a 1994 French thriller film written and directed by Luc Besson. It stars Jean Reno as the titular mob hitman, Gary Oldman as corrupt DEA agent Stansfield, a young Natalie Portman, in her feature film debut, as Mathilda, a 12-year-old girl who is taken in by the hitman after her family is murdered, and Danny Aiello as Tony, the mobster who gives the hitman his assignments.
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Leone "Léon" Montana (Jean Reno) is a hitman (or "cleaner," as he refers to himself) living a solitary life in New York City's Little Italy. His work comes from a mafioso named Tony (Danny Aiello), who operates from the "Supreme Macaroni Company" restaurant. Léon spends his idle time engaging in calisthenics, nurturing a houseplant that early on he describes as his "best friend,"[3] and (in one scene) watching old Gene Kelly musicals.
On a particular day, he meets 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. Her abusive father and self-absorbed stepmother have not even noticed that Mathilda has stopped attending class at her school for troubled girls. 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 sharp-suited and drug-addicted Norman "Stan" Stansfield (Gary Oldman), who murders Mathilda's entire family, missing her only because she was out shopping when they arrived. When she returns and notices the carnage, she calmly continues down the hallway and receives sanctuary from a reluctant Léon.
Mathilda discovers that Léon is a hitman. She 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, claiming that he was the only member of her family she loved, though she clearly regrets the deaths of her other family members. Léon shows her how to use firearms, including a scoped rifle. In return, she offers her services as a maid and teacher, remedying Léon's illiteracy. Mathilda tells Léon several times that she is falling in love with him, but he says nothing back. After increasing her experience with firearms, Mathilda fills a shopping bag with guns from Léon's collection and sets out to kill Stansfield. She bluffs her way into the DEA office by posing as a delivery person, only to be ambushed by Stansfield in a bathroom. Mathilda learns from Stansfield and one of his men that Léon has killed one of the corrupt DEA agents in Chinatown. Léon, after discovering her intentions in a note left for him, rushes to rescue Mathilda, shooting two more of Stansfield's men in the process.
Stansfield is enraged the "Italian hitman" has gone rogue. He beats Tony, forcing him to surrender Léon's whereabouts. As soon 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 frees Mathilda. In the apartment, Léon creates a quick escape for Mathilda by chopping a hole in a slender air shaft. He reassures her and tells her that he loves her and that she has given him "a taste for life", moments before the police come for him. In the chaos that follows, Léon sneaks out of the apartment building disguised as a wounded ESU officer. He is unnoticed save for Stansfield, who recognizes the hitman and shoots him. Léon then places an object in Stansfield's hands, which he explains is "from Mathilda," and dies. Opening his hands, Stansfield finds the pin from a grenade. He rips open Léon's vest to discover several active grenades on his chest right before a massive explosion kills him as well.
Mathilda heads to Tony's place as she was instructed to do by Léon. Tony will not give Mathilda more than a small amount of the fortune Léon had amassed, which Tony was holding for him. He offers a monthly allowance and says school should be her priority for now. Mathilda asks Tony to give her a job, insisting 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, Mathilda makes her way to New Jersey in an attempt to return to school. After telling her and Léon's story to the headmistress, and seemingly being readmitted, Mathilda walks into a field near the school with Léon's houseplant in hand. She digs a hole and plants it, as she had told Léon he should, to give it roots.
Léon is to some extent an expansion of an idea in Besson's earlier 1990 film, La Femme Nikita (in some countries Nikita). In La Femme Nikita Jean Reno plays 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."[4]
While most of the interior footage was shot in France, the rest of the film was shot on location in New York. The final scene at the school was filmed at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey.[5]
The film received generally favorable reviews from critics.[6] As of January 2011, the film holds a "Certified Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with an aggregate rating of 78% based on 41 critical reviews, and the consensus, "Pivoting on the unusual relationship between seasoned hitman and his 12-year-old apprentice — a breakout turn by young Natalie Portman — Luc Besson's Léon is a stylish and oddly affecting thriller".[7]
Mark Salisbury of Empire magazine awarded the film a full five stars. He said, "Oozing style, wit and confidence from every sprocket, and offering a dizzyingly, fresh perspective on the Big Apple that only Besson could bring, this is, in a word, wonderful."[8] Mark Deming at Allmovie awarded the film four stars out of five, describing it as "As visually stylish as it is graphically violent", and featuring "a strong performance from Jean Reno, a striking debut by Natalie Portman, and a love-it-or-hate-it, over-the-top turn by Gary Oldman."[9] Richard Schickel lauded the film, writing, "this is a Cuisinart of a movie, mixing familiar yet disparate ingredients, making something odd, possibly distasteful, undeniably arresting out of them." He praised Oldman's performance as corrupt DEA agent Norman Stansfield as "divinely psychotic."[10]
Roger Ebert awarded the film two-and-a-half stars out of four, writing: "It is a well-directed film, because Besson has a natural gift for plunging into drama with a charged-up visual style." He showed appreciation for the performances in the film, describing it as being "well acted." However, he was not entirely complimentary: "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."[11] The Deseret News' Chris Hicks panned the film, writing, "What Besson really seems interested in is balletic violence - slow-motion explosions, starkly lit bodies flying through the air. However, Sam Peckinpah he ain't." He described the Stansfield character as "utterly ridiculous."[12] Director Luc Besson was pleased with the deliberately overstated character, leading to his hiring Oldman for 1997's The Fifth Element,[13] and the character of Stansfield has since been named by multiple publications as one of the best villains of modern cinema.[14]
Léon was nominated for seven César Awards in 1995.[15]
There is also an extended version of the film, referred to as "international version" or "version intégrale". Containing 25 minutes of additional footage, 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".[16] According to Luc Besson, this is the version he wanted to release, but for the fact that the extra scenes tested poorly with Los Angeles preview audiences. The additional material is found in the film's second act, and it depicts more of the interactions and relationship between Léon and Mathilda, as well as explicitly demonstrating how Mathilda accompanies Léon on several of his hits as "a full co-conspirator," to further her training as a contract killer.[17]
The additional scenes[18] include:
Léon: Version Intégrale was released in France in 1996; in the U.S. it was released on DVD as Léon: The Professional in 2000. Both versions contain the additional footage.[19]
During the filming of final scenes which involved dozens of police cars, a robber from a nearby store encountered the movie set by accident and surrendered himself to a bunch of uniformed extras.[20]
The Bollywood movie Bichhoo was inspired by Léon.
It has been claimed that Besson has written the script for a sequel, which Transporter 3 director Olivier Megaton was to direct and in which Portman would reprise the Mathilda role. Filming was to be delayed until Portman was a bit older. However, in the meantime, Besson left Gaumont Film Company to start his own movie studio, EuropaCorp. Unhappy at Besson's departure, Gaumont Film Company "has held The Professional rights close to the vest — and will not budge." According to Megaton, the sequel will more than likely never happen.[21][22]
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