Léon: The Professional

A film set in New York. Léon is a contract killer. He lives alone, drinks milk, carries a potted plant and cannot read. There is a family on the same floor. The father is holding drugs and is mixed up in things. There is a raid and the family is killed. Mathilda, who is twelve, was outside; she comes back, walks past her door and knocks on his. Léon opens the door. Everything in the film comes out of that decision. From there the girl wants revenge and wants to learn. He refuses at first, then starts teaching her the work. What the narrative is interested in is not crime but teaching: it runs both ways, he teaches her guns and she teaches him to read and to talk. The opposition is one man. A corrupt officer from the drug squad, played entirely over the top, and the film chooses that pitch on purpose. The last section takes place in one building and becomes a full police operation. Mathilda was Natalie Portman's first film; she was twelve and was chosen from a very large casting search. There is also a longer version. Scenes removed for the American release were later restored, and those scenes make the relationship between the two more uncomfortable now, not less. It was shot in New York, with some interiors built in Paris. Jean Reno, Gary Oldman, Natalie Portman and Danny Aiello are in the cast. Luc Besson wrote and directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes the stylised action of the 1990s. Who it is not for: anyone troubled by how the child character is written; the narrative walks that line and it reads worse with time, not better.