Number 45 on IMDb's Top 250
Mathilda, a twelve-year old New York girl, is living an undesirable life among her half-family. Her father stores drugs for two-faced cop Norman Stansfield. Only her little brother keeps Mathilda from breaking apart. One day, Stansfield and his team take cruel revenge on her father for stretching the drugs a little, thus killing the whole family. Only Mathilda, who was out shopping, survives by finding shelter in Léon's apartment in the moment of highest need. Soon, she finds out about the strange neighbour's unusual profession - killing - and desperately seeks his help in taking revenge for her little brother. Léon, who is completely unexperienced in fatherly tasks, and in friendships, does his best to keep Mathilda out of trouble - unsuccessfully. Hilarity ensues. Now, the conflict between a killer, who slowly discovers his abilities to live, to feel, to love and a corrupt police officer, who does anything in his might to get rid of an eye witness, arises to unmeasurable proportions - all for the sake of a little twelve-year old girl, who has nearly nothing to lose.
Trivia: During the filming involving all of the police cars on the street, a man ran from a store he had just robbed. When he encountered the movie set by accident, he saw all of the "police" and gave himself up to a bunch of uniformed extras. Stansfield says he and his goons will show up at noon. At León's house we see a clock that shows 11:58. The following sequence takes exactly two minutes, and they show up exactly at noon.
Another tidbit: The orginial script had more scenes with "awkward sexual tension" between Matilda and Leon, including a scene where the two lie on the bed and Matilda talks about sex. These scenes were later cut out for the American release dubbed The Professional, but were included in the European release, as well as in the deleted scenes of the special edition DVD. Time for me to rant: I have noticed this happening in a lot of movies, mostly, but not all, foreign. A lot of movie are edited "for American sensibilities." What the heck does that mean? Are we as a nation so totally backward in our thinking that people thank they have to save us from watching certain things like we are children? Personaly, I find it kind of insulting. End of rant.
I remember watching previews of this when it came out (known in America as The Professional) and wasn't enthusiastic about watching it. I didn't recognize the lead actor, or the twelve year old girl. Now saying that, I really liked this movie. Really liked it. Gary Oldman is great as the slighly crazy DEA agent. Jean Reno is superb as the cleaner (hitman) whose life is pretty much only work until Mathilda enters it and teaches him to love. And the twelve year old little girl? Well she just carried the movie. Her performance was completely amazing. She stole the movie and to top it off, it was the very first movie of her career. Who was she, you ask? None other then Natalie Portman.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment