Movie Description
Leon: The Professional (French: Leon; also known as The Professional) is a 1994 English-language French crime thriller film written and directed by Luc Besson. It stars Jean Reno and Gary Oldman, and features the motion picture debut of Natalie Portman. In the film Leon (Reno), a professional hitman, reluctantly takes in 12-year-old girl Mathilda (Portman), after her family is murdered by corrupt Drug Enforcement Administration agent Norman Stansfield (Oldman). Leon and Mathilda form an unusual relationship, as she becomes his protegee and learns the hitman's trade. Leon: The Professional was a commercial success, grossing over $45 million worldwide on a $16 million budget.
Mark Salisbury of Empire magazine awarded the film a full five stars. He said, "Oozing style, wit and confidence from every sprocket, and offering a dizzyingly, fresh perspective on the Big Apple that only Besson could bring, this is, in a word, wonderful". Mark Deming at AllMovie awarded the film four stars out of five, describing it as "As visually stylish as it is graphically violent", and featuring "a strong performance from Jean Reno, a striking debut by Natalie Portman, and a love-it-or-hate-it, over-the-top turn by Gary Oldman". Richard Schickel of Time magazine lauded the film, writing, "this is a Cuisinart of a movie, mixing familiar yet disparate ingredients, making something odd, possibly distasteful, undeniably arresting out of them". He praised Oldman's performance as "divinely psychotic".
In the 2013 book, Poseur: A Memoir of Downtown New York City in the '90s, Marc Spitz describes the film as a "cult classic". In 2014, Time Out polled several film critics, directors, actors and stunt actors to list their top action films; Leon: The Professional was listed at No. 42. The character Norman Stansfield has since been named by several publications as one of cinema's greatest villains.