Review of Léon: The Professional (1994) by Foong M — 17 Oct 2011

This movie changes my view on Natalie Portman, where her role in Star Wars or Black Swan were not that impressive to me. But her role in this movie utterly revealed her talent in performance arts! She played a smart, crafty kid who is willing to do almost anything in order to survive, and she played it really well. Her stunning appearance in the beginning of the movie, with colourful stockings and a cigarette on her hand shows very much of her character in her movie. A kid but with very matured thinking, trying hard to be a young women, with smoking and cursing habits. Therefore it is not difficult to portray why she could fall in love with Leon.

Leon, played by Jon Reno, is another amazing actor. His character supposed to be alone, deliberative, and professional in his career as a professional hitman, looked cool all the time. It was until a time where he played with Mathilda (Natalie Portman) on acting on someone, showed very much of his fruitful talent in acting. His final expression towards his love on Mathilda was also very touching to audience.

Last but not least, Gary Oldman played Stansfield as a psychotic corrupted DEA agent was also an attractive character. Without his role, the movie would be too dull. I like his scene when he was sniffing around on Mathilda's father to check whether he was lying, and another scene where he was playing invisible piano before trying to kill him.

Overall, this movie shows all sorts of elements: including subtle version of pedophilia (provided Mathilda is a matured girl in a 11 year old body) with no sex scene but only sexual conversations, violence and sex. But the love between a man and a little girl remained impressive.