Léon (film)

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Léon
Official promotional poster
Directed by	Luc Besson
Produced by	Patrice Ledoux
Written by	Luc Besson
Starring	Jean Reno Natalie Portman Gary Oldman Danny Aiello
Music by	Eric Serra Soundtrack: Sting
Cinematography	Thierry Arbogast
Editing by	Sylvie Landra
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures Gaumont
Release date(s)	14 September 1994 18 November 1994 3 February 1995
Running time	110 min (theatrical version) 133 min (version intégrale) 136 min (uncut version)
Language	English
Budget	₣115 million (est.)
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Léon (aka The Cleaner, The Professional, or Léon the Professional) is a 1994 film written and directed by French director Luc Besson. It stars Jean Reno and Gary Oldman, as well as Natalie Portman in her first starring role.

[edit] Plot

Léon (Jean Reno) is a lonely and emotionally detached hitman. He lives a solitary life and spends his time watching musicals in between training and taking assassin jobs for Italian mobster Tony (Danny Aiello). Léon is seen in a cinema, watching a musical with faint amazement at the joie de vivre depicted by the film's characters, something he himself is unable to express. He meets Mathilda (Natalie Portman), a twelve-year-old girl who lives with an abusive family in the same apartment building. After corrupt DEA agents, headed by agent Norman Stansfield (Gary Oldman), kill Mathilda's family, Léon saves Mathilda by grudgingly opening his apartment door to let her in with her groceries.

Mathilda then pressures Léon into taking her in; since she has nowhere to go. She tries to convince him to teach her his trade so she can avenge her brother's murder. In return, she offers herself to do all his house work. After an initial one night stay at his apartment, Léon accepts her offer. Working together, the two slowly build an emotional attachment to each other, with Léon becoming both Mathilda's friend and also a father figure. In taking care of her, Léon begins to find something more meaningful in his life than his job.

Mathilda plays Russian roulette

As Mathilda gains confidence, she tails Stansfield and enters the DEA building in an attempt to kill him. She is caught by him and held as a captive by his cronies. Léon finds a letter of her intent on revenge and heads to the building. He rescues her, killing a number of Stansfield's men in the process. At this point, Mathilda is desperate for revenge and Leon has become sympathetic to her situation. (Unknown to Mathilda, Leon was out assassinating Stanfield's men while Mathilda was tailing Stanfield.) Stansfield becomes enraged by the "Italian hitman" and confronts Tony, who gives up Léon's whereabouts. As Mathilda returns home from grocery shopping, a SWAT team, headed by Stansfield, is waiting for her. Léon holds the leader of the SWAT team hostage, and orders him to let Mathilda go. He does, and Léon tells Mathilda to grab a nearby fire ax. Léon, still holding the SWAT team's leader hostage, shoots the fire sprinkler and brings Mathilda into his room, leaving the SWAT leader outside. Assuming Léon had shot their leader, the SWAT team open fire, and accidentally kill their unarmed leader. Léon hacks open a ventilation shaft located in the kitchen with the fire ax, and sends Mathilda to safety. As he tells her to go on, Léon expresses his love for her and how they will meet up and live a normal life together.

As Mathilda escapes the apartment and heads down the block amidst the large police presence, Léon is left behind. He uses the confusion of a rocket propelled grenade to steal a vest and mask from a fallen SWAT member. The next SWAT member that rushes in sees him wearing the uniform and assumes he is a SWAT member. He is ushered out of the smoke filled apartment. Seeing an opportunity to slip out unnoticed, Léon takes off out the building, where he is spotted by Stansfield. Stansfield sneaks up behind Léon and shoots him from behind. As Léon lies in a pool of blood, Stansfield has a chance to speak with Léon face to face before he dies. During their exchange, Léon reveals the pulled pin of a grenade that is strapped to his chest. (He had told Mathilda earlier in the film that this move is known as 'the ring trick') The grenade explodes and kills the two. Mathilda is then seen returning to school as the film ends. Mathilda plants Léon's plant (whom he refers to as his 'best friend' and nurtures throughout the film) in the grounds of the school, in memory of him, and as she had once promised she would, 'to give it roots'.

[edit] Production

'Leon's' apartment building in Manhattan on 97th street and inside the store from which he buys his two quarts of milk. Feb. 2005.

Across the street from 'Leon's' apartment building and local store. Photo taken Feb. 2005, 12 years after the movie was shot.

Léon is to some extent an expansion of an idea in Besson's earlier film, Nikita (1990), in which Jean Reno played a similar character to Léon, called Victor. Besson has said he considers Léon to be a more human "cousin" of Victor.^[1]

In the first draft of Besson's screenplay, the hitman's full name is Leone Montana (making him of Italian origin), although this is not apparent in the finished film. [1]

[edit] Version intégrale

There exists a longer edition of the movie, often referred to as the director's cut, "international version" or "version intégrale", that has approximately twenty minutes of additional footage that was removed from the original cut in response to American test screenings.^{[citation needed]} The additional material is found in the film's second act, and somewhat alters the tenor of Léon and Mathilda's relationship by delving more obviously into the notion that their interaction is more than just between a father figure and a daughter. In one scene, Mathilda plays Russian Roulette to try and get Léon to admit he loves her; in another, she openly asks him to be her first lover (the two are seen waking up in bed together after he refuses, though only the version intégrale gives the proper context to the scene by showing them falling asleep in the first place). Most of the other material in the longer cut involves Mathilda actually accompanying Léon on several of his hits; while she is never shown actually pulling the trigger of a real gun, she is obviously at least an accessory to several murders.

Luc Besson often releases extended versions of his movies after their original theatrical runs. They are usually called "long versions", or "version longue", and get limited runs in normal cinemas of large cities. The existence of an extended version does not necessarily indicate the original one having been somehow censored, although in Léon's case the shorter original edit was done minding the American audience.^{[citation needed]} Besson does not consider that cut defective or corrupt in any way, however, just more condensed and less elaborate.^{[citation needed]} Extended versions are targeted at fans who endure and enjoy a slower-paced show, Eric Serra's music and the general climate, like in The Big Blue.^{[citation needed]} Léon received its theatrical release in France and worldwide as the normal version, not the longer cut.

The "version longue" of Léon was show in 1996 in French cinemas (followed by VHS), and released - as "version intégrale" - on LaserDisc and later Region 2 DVD in Japan. It appeared as the "international version" on Region 1 DVD in North America in 2000, and was re-issued in 2005.

[edit] Parodies, homages and remakes

• Hong Kong comedian Stephen Chow starred in a semi-parody of Leon called Out of the Dark, directed by Lau Jan Wai, in which Chow plays a ghost hunter who assassinates ghosts in a haunted building. Many scenes and elements are reminiscent of the original Leon, albeit poorly executed and campy. The Chow character is dressed in black trench coat with sunglasses and a black baseball cap (instead of Leon's skullcap) and he carries a sunflower pot, while his co-actress Karen Mok plays an older looking Mathilda complete with short skirt and similar hairstyle to Natalie Portman.

• There is Bollywood remake of the film called Bichhoo, which stars Bobby Deol and Rani Mukherjee. The character of Mathilda, played by Mukherjee, has been altered significantly, as she is now 20 years old and is in a relationship with the protagonist. [2]

• Kite, a Japanese anime that was directly influenced by Luc Besson's two films Nikita and Leon, and are merged into a singular storyline. Kite is notorious for scenes of explicit sex and extreme violence.

• The Hong Kong action movie, Fulltime Killer, references The Professional in one scene, among other popular action films.

• Leon S. Kennedy, a fictional character from the Resident Evil game series, was cited as being based on Léon himself by the series producer, Capcom. The character of Leon S. Kennedy was revamped for the recently released game Resident Evil 4, as he was no longer a police officer, but a trained operative working under the President of the United States. His new character shares characteristics of Léon, as the game shares characteristics of the movie, with the President's daughter, Ashley Graham, taking a Mathilda-esque role, though not for the same reasons. In addition, one can obtain a bonus weapon upon completion of the game; it is visibly a Heckler & Koch VP70, but is known within the game as the "Matilda."

• The last level of the video game Hitman: Contracts is a homage to the final scene of Léon, where the main character (who has an American accent) battles his way out of an apartment being attacked by the Parisian police. This is a role-reversal of Léon, where the hitman has a French accent and is being attacked by American police.

• Need For Speed: Most Wanted features a small homage to the famous exchange between Stansfield and Benny. The player narrowly escapes the police after completing the final race against Razor in career mode. Sergeant Cross arrives and orders his subordinate to dispatch "everyone" to pursue the player, leading to the final police chase of the game.

• In the 2007 film Hot Fuzz, the lead character Nick Angel has a dearly loved 'Japanese Peace Lily', which compares to Leon's plant.

[edit] Reference

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Léon

• Léon at the Internet Movie Database
• Discussion about the 150 min version and the original script