Leon

I hope you're not lying, Leon. I really hope that deep down inside of you there is no love in you. Because if there is just a little bit of love in you, I think that in a few minutes you're going to regret you didn't say anything.

A review by Mike Shea   Movie Rating: ( * * * * * )    DVD Rating: ( * * * * · )

The Professional was a movie that always had my attention. Like Point of Return and True Romance, it was kind of an underdog movie that never got a lot of attention from the big action fans, but was still known in the deepest circles of John Woo nerds as really great action. Leon is the international cut of The Professional and I would say the added twenty some minutes really makes it a different movie. The foreign cut of Leon takes the Professional from a decent action / crime movie into a truly unique film.

In a nugget of a summary, Leon is a movie about an Italian hit man who takes in a young girl as an apprentice. Any movie with this much guts deserves a very high rating. The current film industry is constantly monitored and censored into spineless movies given us into manageable doses by an army of suits who thinks we are too stupid to handle a movie that makes us think. Leon breaks this mold.

Every so often in American film a movie slips by with a single scene that really defines the rest of the film. I love finding these little pearls that break up the normal crap we are given. The music box scene in Batman Forever (the rest of the movie was total shit, but that scene was good), the cops confession in The Cell, and the God visions in The Messenger all come to mind as examples. Leon has about three of these scenes. Two of these three scenes were cut out of the American version because they might cause us to run around and overturn cars or something, but they are scenes that truly define the seriousness of the movie. This isn't a fun little movie, it is a dark movie about how love can find itself among all the death of the criminal underworld. Jean Reno, one of the best gunslingers in action movies next to Chow Yun Fat and Michael Ironside, does a wonderful job as the Cleaner. He brings a level of acting to this movie that you rarely see in a movie labeled as an action movie. Natalie Portman shows just how talented an actor she is, even at the age of 13. The director, Luc Besson, truly deserves credit as an artist with a dark vision for this film.

The International release of Leon on DVD is far superior to the previous editions released in the states. It has a full Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack and a 16x9 enhanced picture. There are no real features to it, but it is still a wonderful version of the film.

Leon deserves to be in the top ten action movies of all time. I can't think of a single thing wrong with it, and instead I find myself going back to the acting ability of the lead actors, the incredible action scenes, and the story, which has more balls than the last ten action movies of the States all put together. As long as movies like this still get made and get released, there is hope for us. Otherwise we are doomed to End of Days.

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