Leon: The Professional

Leon: The Professional

By: Nicolette Karter

 

        Who absolutely loves Gary Oldman & Natalie Portman? EVERYONE! One reason is because of their performances in this movie. Valyrie and Anatole both adore Gary (yes, we are on a first name basis; even if it’s only in my mind L ) and you should too. If you’ve seen Natalie (in her first role) as Mathilda in this, you’ll agree with me that she should have gotten at least an Oscar nomination for this. Both Natalie & Gary should have gotten Oscars long before they did (Gary still doesn’t even have one yet, just a single nomination). Jean Reno, who plays the title assassin, was also wonderful in it; I don’t mean to diminish his role/performance, it’s just that I love the other main actors/characters to death.

        Speaking of death, the movie is about an assassin, Leon played by Reno, who saves a little girl (Mathilda played by an 11 year old Natalie) from bad guys her dad works for. Her dad stole drugs from them, which based on the bloodbath that goes down in her apartment, you should never do. Anyway, Gary Oldman plays the bad guy (Stansfield) because he’s amazing at being the ne’er-do-well, and doesn’t want any loose ends, so he and his men are looking for Mathilda so they can kill her. Which now seems a bit extreme even from the get-go; these guys go to weirdly great lengths considering the goal, but it never clicked how extreme they were to begin with. On the other hand, boring people don’t make good television.

        Quick & rather specific tangent, does anyone know the drug Gary Oldman’s character took near the beginning? Not that I want it, in fact I want to go out of my way not to take it. Mostly I’m just curious as to what would make someone react like that. It might be made up for the film to show how weird he is; that’s probably what it is, never mind. Just to give you guys perspective, this is the clip from the movie I was talking about:

 

        So the movie mostly focuses on the relationship between Leon and Mathilda. I think it’s cute that these two loners become friends, seeing as I don’t think either one of them lets anyone in very often. Mathilda only knows assholes (pardon my swearing) and worrying about someone is an occupational hazard for Leon. There were apparently talks about having a more romantic aspect to their relationship, but it didn’t make it into the final movie. Mathilda seemed to get a crush on Leon, but more than that, they were just friends. I’m glad with the final decision on that topic; and it makes sense Mathilda would love the first person to treat her with even one iota of decency (don’t worry, nothing weird happens). The movie doesn’t show much background of these characters before they all met/knew about each other, but you can kind of tell the reasoning behind a lot of their actions based off of the little you see: the only living this around Leon is a plant, the only person who makes Mathilda smile is her cute little brother, and that clip above shows how off-putting Stansfield is. Kudos to the writers & actors for being able to give a background to these characters with only like a minute to do so before the adventure starts.

        So, what did you guys think about this film? Loved it? I thought so. (Kidding) Really, tell me what you thought, and what else I should write about.