Leon / The Professional - BD
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Page 1 of 3 The film that launched Natalie Portman's career arrives on Blu-ray Disc, but is THE PROFESSIONAL professional-looking enough to impress in high-def....?
Having developed a growing admiration for the talents of Natalie Portman, a young actress whose intelligence and instincts should take her far, it was most interesting to revisit her impressive screen debut in writer/director Luc Besson's Leon / The Professional. The professional is an assassin for hire, a hit man named Leon (Jean Reno) who works for Tony (Danny Aiello), a hood who calmly sits in a New York restaurant dispensing death. Leon is very good at what he does. With an almost supernatural cunning, he's able to dispatch small regiments of thugs. He lives in a grimy apartment house near Little Italy, where he consumes two quarts of milk each day. Ulcers? Leon projects overwhelming weariness. He seems trapped, unable to break away from the only profession he's managed to master. It will be revealed that he cannot even read or write. He's cut off from humanity; his only friend is a small houseplant. Leon's neighbor is a fool of a street hustler who makes the fatal mistake of cutting some drugs he was asked to hold for a sadistic, corrupt DEA agent, Norman Stansfield (Gary Oldman). Stansfield takes brutal revenge, slaughtering the hustler, his wife, teenage daughter, and four-year-old son. But there's a second daughter, Matilda (Natalie Portman); she was shopping for groceries during the carnage. When the surprisingly street-smart 12-year-old Mathilda returns and sees the butchery through her apartment's open door, she forces her feelings down, walks directly to Leon's apartment, and quietly begs to be let in. Leon's seen everything through a spy-hole in his door. Torn between his professional instincts to remain invisible and his unexpected compassion for the waif standing just outside his door, he reluctantly lets her in. This begins one of the strangest alliances on film. Mathilda wants to take revenge on the four men who killed her little brother, and when she discovers how Leon makes his living, she asks him to train her as an assassin. Mathilda offers to clean his apartment and wash his laundry in exchange, she'll even teach him how to read and write. He's understandably repelled by the idea of turning this young girl into a murderer, but Mathilda convinces him that her death will be his responsibility if he doesn't show her how to kill. He grudgingly agrees.
As Mathilda learns her lessons and Leon learns his, we see him soften. He begins to connect with another human being, perhaps for the first time in decades. We learn that Leon has a noble side, someone who will accept a contract on evil but flatly refuses to kill women or children. So it's no surprise when Leon decides to protect Mathilda by taking out her family's murderers himself. Unfortunately, Mathilda simultaneously decides that she's learned enough to pull off a preemptive strike of her own, a naive move that will build to the climax of the piece. Luc Besson does a masterful job of bringing this unlikely tale to the screen. Each actor offers an exceptional performance, particularly the young Ms. Portman. Gary Oldman does chew on the scenery a bit, but has a wonderful knack for portraying slightly deranged villains. Jean Reno's Leon projects a sad intensity that provokes sympathy for the character, even when he's forced to defend himself against legitimate police officers. > When this film was originally released on DVD in February of '98 as The Professional, there was some considerable consternation among fans that Sony had decided to release the domestic theatrical version that runs about 110 minutes. A twenty-three minute longer cut had been released in France in '96, and fans were hoping for the scenes they had only read about. Sony satisfied that pent-up demand in August of 2000 when the longer version was released as Leon The Professional, and now the film has arrived on Blu-ray Disc.... |
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