Movie Journals |
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Leon the Professional
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Leon the Professional Leon the Professional (136 minutes run time) starts out looking like a cheesy 80’s mobster flick. By the fifth minute, I decided that I wouldn’t like the film. Bad actors were being slashed left and right by an unknown/unseen assassin, but I didn’t know anything about them, and therefore, I had no concern that they were being murdered. The following scene only showed the eyes of two people talking in a smoke filled room. I suppose this was for a dramatic effect; only, it ended up just looking silly. Maybe I’ve watched too many cheesy 80’s mobster flicks because this beginning of this movie almost looked like a spoof. By minute 25 of the movie, the characters become more interesting. We have met the little girl, Matilda, and we have met the hit man, Leon. Plot point one comes as their lives intersect when some bad cops mow down Matilda’s whole family. Showing her street smarts, she nonchalantly walks past the open door of her apartment, now a scene of a brutal mass killing, and knocks on Leon’s door as if she lives there instead. This scene is intense as the 12-year old girl pleadingly whispers for Leon to open the door while Leon checks the peephole periodically to see if she’s still there. He decides to save her life and lets her in his apartment. The movie’s second plot point comes at about minute 105 when Matilda botches confronting the bad cop who orchestrated the butchering of her family and Leon rescues her.
With some intense moments like when Matilda holds a loaded gun to her head and pulls the trigger as a test to see if Leon will save her life, the movie turned out better than I thought it would from the beginning scenes. I watched the international version that is the complete cut; apparently the US version doesn’t have the Russian roulette scene. What did surprise me, however, was to find out that that the US version still contains much of the implications that Matilda thinks she’s in love with, and even offers herself to, Leon. Many Americans would oppose a movie containing a relationship of this nature, just on principles, without thinking through how the characters came to be who they are.
The most memorable line of the movie is when Matilda asks Leon if life is always this hard, or does it get better. He responds, “Always like this.”
Karen Walker 13 October 2003 |