Leon - The Director's Cut [Blu-ray]

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Léon is a hitman (or "cleaner", as he refers to himself) working for a mafioso named "Old Tony" in the Little Italy neighborhood of New York City.

In New York City, 12-year-old Mathilda (Portman) witnesses her family being gunned down by psychotic government official Norman Stansfield (Gary Oldman) and his team of corrupt cops. The New York Times ' Janet Maslin wrote, " The Professional is much too sentimental to sound shockingly amoral in the least.I had an issue with my check disc in that the Director’s Cut drops out of sync between 85:03 and 88:22. Mathilda looks up to Léon and quickly develops a crush on him, often telling him she loves him but he does not reciprocate.

Mathilda goes to Tony and tries to convince him to hire her, but Tony flatly refuses to hire a twelve-year-old and tells Mathilda that Léon told him to give his money to her if anything happened to him. The first line in the lyrics, "this is from Matilda", refers to Léon's last words, shortly before his grenades detonate and kill Stansfield.It was commercially successful in Japan, being certified gold for 100,000 copies shipped in December 1999. The film was released in France by Gaumont and internationally through Gaumont Buena Vista International on 14 September 1994, and received mostly positive reviews from critics. Léon: The Professional is to some extent an expansion of an idea in Besson's earlier 1990 film, La Femme Nikita (in some countries Nikita). Mathilda walks onto a field near the school to plant Léon's houseplant, as she had told Léon, to "give it roots". When Léon is out on a job, Mathilda fills a bag with guns from Léon's collection and sets out to kill Stansfield.

At first, Léon is unsettled by her presence and considers killing her in her sleep but he eventually trains Mathilda and shows her how to use various weapons.It’s a masterpiece of mainstream cinema that twists all the conventions on their heads, and still manages to thrill, enthral, and move, even now 25 years past its original release. The image quality of this Blu-ray is astounding, and if the audio glitch is confined to the check disc, then this is another must own release. In the 2013 book, Poseur: A Memoir of Downtown New York City in the '90s, Marc Spitz wrote that the film is "considered a cult classic". It is the best Luc Besson film that I have seen to date, combining a box office crowd pleaser with art-house sensibilities. This could be the sticking point in the film, except the emotional maturity of the characters redeems this story arc.

That’s because Leon is a hitman, and getting on the authorities’ radar, even crooked authorities isn’t in his interest. One of his men arrives and informs him that Léon killed Malky, one of the corrupt DEA agents, in Chinatown that morning. Whether you’re rewatching the movie for the hundredth time or checking Leon out with fresh eyes, the film is a classic that still holds up just as a well in 2019 as it did back in 1994. After they discover that he has been stealing from their stash, DEA agents invade the apartment, led by their boss, the sharply dressed drug-addict Norman Stansfield. Hal Hinson, of The Washington Post, also praised Oldman's acting, saying "Reno plays it minimally; Oldman splatters his performance all over the screen.

It seems absolutely crazy to think that Luc Besson’s Leon is now celebrating 25 years since its initial release, but it is indeed 25 years and counting since this iconic movie was first released in 1994. I do have every intention of getting around to watching them; it’s just getting around to it that is hard.