Léon: The Professional (1994)
Directed by Luc Besson
Léon, the top hit man in New York, has earned a rep as an effective "cleaner". But when his next-door neighbors are wiped out by a loose-cannon DEA agent, he becomes the unwilling custodian of 12-year-old Mathilda. Before long, Mathilda's thoughts turn to revenge, and she considers following in Léon's footsteps.
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16 films that influenced Léon: The Professional
What critics say influenced Léon: The Professional
After all, when a toon flick has the audacity to reference the 1974 masterpiece Chinatown, it's clear that the lowest common denominator is nowhere to be found.
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.
Besson still hasn't taken full wing with this theme, the way John Huston did in Prizzi's Honor, but that was a comedy and Besson isn't a comedian.
But then and now, her performance feels no less revelatory than Jodie Foster’s in “Taxi Driver” — perhaps even more so.
The first shot of her in the movie is a slow tilt up her stockinged legs, and in a couple of sequences he dresses her like Jodie Foster in "Taxi Driver."
She's something like the Jodie Foster character in " Taxi Driver ," old for her years.
I'm sure Scorsese couldn't even make "Taxi Driver" today because of the 12 year old prostitute that Jodie Foster played.
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There's "Lolita"-like tension, but also an innocence and nobility that Vladimir Nabokov's hero and heroine never approached.
She's not an exotic out of Diva, though you'll recognize the violent poetry of that Beineix masterpiece in the imagery.
Everything is heart-on-sleeve romanticized, right down to the way in which Léon escapes his rancid work into retrospective screenings of musical fantasias like “Singin’ in the Rain.”
He's a cartoon bad guy with a set of fancy traits; he listens to Beethoven before moving in for the kill -- a nod to A Clockwork Orange, I guess.
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But this movie actually is as fantastical as "The Wizard of Oz," as stylized as the Gene Kelly musical ("It's Always Fair Weather") that pops up on TV in Leon's apartment.
(To find a 12-year old in 1994 who knows " Bonnie and Clyde " is so extraordinary that it almost makes everything else she does plausible.)