Review of Léon: The Professional (1994) by Amanda C — 02 May 2016

An interesting movie to have come out in 94 but a bit too saccharin for my taste. Natalie Portman did a great job acting but her character bothered me to no end... It could easily be explained that she's over sexed due to her family situation, but Leon's responses felt too arm's length and therefore made the movie feel complicit in sexualizing her. Any self respecting man being hit on by a 12 year old would have had a stronger reaction than him, it's hard to believe he's that naive. Gary Oldman was also too much to be believable. I guess my biggest complaint is this movie starts out as a very grounded and introspective film and betrays itself in maudlin shows of manufactured emotion.

I also hated the blown-out look of the film, very 'video'- that aged pretty poorly.