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Léon: The Professional

Leon (Léon)

1994

Luc Besson

Jean Reno, Natalie Portman, Gary Oldman, Danny Aiello ...

7.6

73,330

Action. Thriller. Drama 12-year-old Mathilda's family are murdered in a drug deal gone awry. Orphaned by the massacre, Mathilda is forced to take shelter in the apartment of a neighbor, Leon, whom she knows only slightly. He's a loner and first generation immigrant, who also happens to be a professional hitman. He's never had reason to care about anybody and she has no one else to turn to. Together, they form a makeshift bond that will forever change both their lives. [+]

	Author	Review
United States	Lisa Nesselson Variety	"A naive fairy tale splattered with blood."	NEU
United States	Lisa Schwarzbaum Entertainment Weekly	"Ah, monsieur, you can lead a Frenchman to the Big Apple, but you can't make him a New Yorker -- and that's exactly what makes 'The Professional' so fascinating."	POS
United States	Janet Maslin The New York Times	"'The Professional' is much too sentimental to sound shockingly amoral in the least. Even in a finale of extravagant violence, it manages to be maudlin."	NEU
United States	Roger Ebert rogerebert.com	"Besson has a natural gift for plunging into drama with a charged-up visual style. (...) Rating: ★★½ (out of 4)"	POS
United States	Jonathan Rosenbaum Chicago Reader	"[It] seems at once too deranged and too mechanical."	NEG
United Kingdom	Christopher Hooton The Independent	"A perfectly-balanced movie (...) [Its] influence can be felt in a number of action films that have followed it, but none have replicated its atmosphere of terror and play, melodrama and mundanity quite so well."	POS
United States	Joshua Klein AV Club	"What makes 'Léon' so intriguing is the ironic contrast of its main characters (...) The casting of Reno was smart"	POS
United States	Peter Rainer Los Angeles Times	"Natalie Portman isn’t enough of an actress to unfold Mathilda’s pain (...) It’s a vile little exercise."	NEG

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