Gloria (1980)
Directed by John Cassavetes
When a young boy's family is killed by the mob, their tough neighbor Gloria becomes his reluctant guardian. In possession of a book that the gangsters want, the pair go on the run in New York.
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What critics compared Gloria to
Criminals teamed with kids is nothing new: John Cassavetes' Gloria tackled the subject 20 years ago for laughs.
Though there are plot similarities here to John Cassavetes' 1980 "Gloria" (where gun moll Gena Rowlands aided a kid on the run), "The Professional" doesn't really make sense as a thriller.
Essentially, I've seen The Professional a few times before; its closest antecedent is John Cassavetes' Gloria, from 1980, about a little boy who runs afoul of gangsters and is protected by a tough female detective.
His father was the late John Cassavetes, who for years financed his own deeply personal and naturalistic films (Faces, Minnie and Moskowitz, A Woman Under the Influence, Gloria), often co-starring wife Rowlands.
It all plays out like a hyperactive cross between a hard-boiled John Cassavetes melodrama like Gloria or The Killing of a Chinese Bookie and a character-driven Sidney Lumet thriller like Q&A or Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead .