In "Léon", the title character (who is a professional "cleaner", or hitman) wears his trademark beanie hat and small circular sunglasses whenever on the job to hide his immediate identity: he goes to necessary lengths not to be recognized. In a way, the adornment of this combo is the dividing point between himself and his work. Léon needs that. A clear barrier to seperate the two sides of his life. And when he's working, no one is better. In the first action sequence, director Luc Besson shows us the full set piece of how our hero behaves during office hours: methodical, precise, deadly. He moves like Batman, somehow navigating through the building unseen and well enough to off all the bad guys without even breaking a sweat. It's Besson's exclamation point saying, "This is how good he can be!".
In the aftermath, when the hat and the glasses are taken off, Léon becomes the average Joe. Walking along the streets of modern New York with a Chaplin waddle, he leads a lonely but simple existence: water his plant, do his situps, and drink his milk. He doesn't need anything else. The plant is his companion, the situps his release, the milk his indulgence. This Order Of Things shows a childlike contentment. As long as he does things right, he's not a bad person.
Meanwhile, down three doors lives Mathilda (young young young Natalie Portman), the waifish daughter of a drug middleman. With a bully sister, a prostitute step-mother, an abusive father, and a cheery little brother whom she looks after, she, save for her brother, has little to look forward to. When a crooked D.E.A. officer (Gary Oldman - more electric in this movie than he's ever been) slaughters her family over a drug dispute while she's at the store, she has no choice but to intrude on the life of the Man At The End Of The Hall, Léon. It means her life.
Extremely relunctant, he eventually agrees to take Mathilda under his wing and train her to "clean". Their relationship quickly blossoms like a giant magnolia, with him providing shelter, and her providing a little life in his life.
Mixing his French influences with New York sensibility, Luc Besson OUTDOES himself. The entire film foreshadows something else, and the incredibly well-scripted emotional growth shown by the two main characters is all the greater foreshadow to how much the wonderfully unwired Gary Oldman character needs to be punished for his madness. This movie flawlessly blends the best of both worlds: it is at once both a movie guys would love and a movie girls would love. It's the unisex action film.
Among the ten best films of the 1990s, definitely Luc Besson's best movie, and dare I say, one of the best love stories ever made.
Five stars.
In the aftermath, when the hat and the glasses are taken off, Léon becomes the average Joe. Walking along the streets of modern New York with a Chaplin waddle, he leads a lonely but simple existence: water his plant, do his situps, and drink his milk. He doesn't need anything else. The plant is his companion, the situps his release, the milk his indulgence. This Order Of Things shows a childlike contentment. As long as he does things right, he's not a bad person.
Meanwhile, down three doors lives Mathilda (young young young Natalie Portman), the waifish daughter of a drug middleman. With a bully sister, a prostitute step-mother, an abusive father, and a cheery little brother whom she looks after, she, save for her brother, has little to look forward to. When a crooked D.E.A. officer (Gary Oldman - more electric in this movie than he's ever been) slaughters her family over a drug dispute while she's at the store, she has no choice but to intrude on the life of the Man At The End Of The Hall, Léon. It means her life.
Extremely relunctant, he eventually agrees to take Mathilda under his wing and train her to "clean". Their relationship quickly blossoms like a giant magnolia, with him providing shelter, and her providing a little life in his life.
Mixing his French influences with New York sensibility, Luc Besson OUTDOES himself. The entire film foreshadows something else, and the incredibly well-scripted emotional growth shown by the two main characters is all the greater foreshadow to how much the wonderfully unwired Gary Oldman character needs to be punished for his madness. This movie flawlessly blends the best of both worlds: it is at once both a movie guys would love and a movie girls would love. It's the unisex action film.
Among the ten best films of the 1990s, definitely Luc Besson's best movie, and dare I say, one of the best love stories ever made.
Five stars.