The people who love action films might check this out, Leon: The Professional (1994) written and directed by Luc Besson. There will be three key characters, as our hero, there is Jean Reno as Leon, in the villain character there is Gary Oldman as Norman Stansfield and another key character is Natalie Portman as Mathilda as a twelve years old girl and that's her first film.
The story progressed featuring Leon as a hitman in New York, who takes many contracts and refers to them as cleaning. Mathilda is a twelve-year-old girl, raised in an abusive family whose father got into some problems for issues with a corrupted DEA agent due to the mismanagement of some drugs given to him to hold. Her whole family was murdered by that officer but Mathilda was out of the home so she escaped and returned in the middle of the ongoing massacre over her family and she walked past her apartment and started knocking on Leon's flat to save her as they don't recognize her.
Leon did open the door and saved her but he was in a dilemma whether he did it right by saving her or he brought unnecessary trouble for him. That's where the story was getting more complex for many. To be honest, I didn’t like the approach of a twelve years old girl to be a hitman, okay I admit that her family was murdered and she was in trauma still it felt too much for me to digest. Well, Leon did agree somehow to train her to be a hitman, a cleaner, that's how they refer to this.
Meanwhile, during all of this Mathilda started to fall in love with Leon, that's another thing that felt unfit for me. I wasn’t ready to digest the love of a twelve years kid for someone of her age, hehe. She was claiming her as eighteen over and over again to be recognized as an adult. Okay, this love chapter, I didn’t like, felt inappropriate. Maybe it's just me who felt this way, others may have a different point of view on this.
You know, a good impression Leon made on my mind was his philosophy over a small tob plant that he takes care of. Btw I don't know why I felt Stan's acting was perfect, truly I didn't think he was perfect for his part and I enjoyed them too as expected.
As an action movie from 1994, this one is mind-blowing with the action scenes. There was a scene where Mathilda goes to Stan's office disguised as a delivery girl with a bag full of ammo to seek revenge by killing stan. Well, that was a mistake that trapped her and made things worse.
Overall it was a good one to watch but didn't touch my high expectations seeing an 8.5 rating on IMDb. Maybe those clashes of my personal feelings led me to this conclusion. I would rate it 7.5 out of 10. Watch it If you prefer action or thriller genre films. Happy Watching!
