Review: Leon (1994)

Let’s talk about Luc Besson.

When thinking of French cinema, many think of the New wave arthouse films—often featuring very long driving scenes with gravelly, tobacco-chewing narrations of Parisians going on about existentialism. Around the time of the late eighties, younger directors began their own movement with ‘Cinema Du Look’—focusing on rich visuals and cinematography, younger characters, and slick style over substance-stuffed scripts. And thus entered Monsieur Besson with his first breakout that reached the Anglosphere, Nikita.

Nikita is indeed that entertaining mixture of Frenchness meeting Hollywood—particularly one scene where the titular character, wearing nothing but lingerie, targets a mark with a sniper rifle while chatting with her boyfriend on the other side of a door about their relationship. I can’t really think of any other nationality that would give us this sort of thing—it’d only be more perfect if she had a cigarette and complaints to give about the local McDonalds not serving wine. In any case, this film also gave us the memorable character of Victor, played by the effortlessly badass Jean Reno, a hitman who solves literally every obstacle by riddling it with bullets. Once again, Frenchmen taking on American sensibilities.

But this minor character went on to be the basis of what firmly established Besson over in the US. During the pre-production of a little flick called The Fifth Element, his company had to delay it thanks to Bruce Willis rescheduling, and to keep themselves together, they decided to cobble a much more low-key picture in between. You can count on everyone involved being all kinds of professional, because here we got Leon.

Fronted fully by Reno this time, Leon also has him play an implacable assassin, but where Nikita’s Victor was a complete psycho incapable of not shooting every mofo in the face, this character’s a lot more balanced. The film opens with him performing what he does best nevertheless, and we’re treated to the slickly directed and edited action sequences that Besson at his best has to offer. Although as is also the case with Besson, you really can’t think about the proceedings too much, since if you do, it becomes apparent that Leon is basically teleporting around. Still damn cool to watch nevertheless.

The film doesn’t waste any more time in introducing the rest of the key players—we meet a young Natalie Portman as a New York delinquent with a horrible family, centered around a drug dealer in over his head. Specifically, he’s pissing off the gloriously, gloriously hammy Gary Oldman, here as a corrupt police official. I suppose I might as well talk about how Oldman apparently made it his quest to play as many bad guys in the nineties as he could, usually with a dubious accent. You can lose count keeping track, whether he was being thrown off a plane by Harrison Ford for his comical attempt at being Russian, owning the set in The Fifth Element, or being the few beacons of entertainment in whatever the hell that Lost in Space movie was.

And in this movie, while Portman does play her role with everything it needs, from her determination to sadness over losing her family to Oldman’s mania, it’s the latter that proves the more memorable, despite not appearing in that many scenes. And there’s that one line. You probably know the one. 

I have much the same response to people suggesting Starship Troopers 2 was watchable.

The story keeps up a decent pace as Portman finds herself adopted by the approachable but somewhat cold Leon, who doesn’t really seem to have much of a life outside of putting holes in people’s heads. The lack of extravagant budget next to Besson’s future features does make it a more human focus and story, as the two soon learn to complete each other and find purpose in life. But as often with this form of cinema, it’s the style that puts it all together.

 The film has a warm look benefiting its origins in French stylization, one that you don’t really see a lot any more and one I also unfortunately happen to like. I also enjoy the score by Besson collaborator Eric Serra, who often gives a very distinct, discordant electronic offering, which does help make his projects feel more unique. It all combines to help give the movie a feeling of grit in its flaking New York apartments, while balancing that with the necessary color and contrast.

As to the rest of the story? There’s one thing we need to talk about, and that’s the two versions of the film out there—one for the US, and one for the rest of the world. In the former, the relationship between Natalie and Leon is depicted as more paternal, which makes enough sense given the latter’s loss of family. In the latter…well, how to put this…it comes off as a lot more physical, to the point where Portman’s character comes close to trying to hump him, not to put a fine point on it. You can see why American distributors wouldn’t take to this, and some might want to keep it in mind seeking out the film.

Overall, for what was basically a side-project, Leon remains pretty memorable and enjoyable in its own right, with a nice balance of style and character—it’s one I can recommend. Afterwards, Besson moved to what some consider his magnum opus—The Fifth Element, a mashup of French scifi graphic novels and more. There’s no other film with a style like it, from the fashion to the rest of the fashion, and it’s a visual feast that still holds up in that regard. Otherwise, I still enjoy the hell out of it for being silly scifi fun that doesn’t take itself too seriously—hell, it’s got an orange-haired perfect being played by a Ukranian model kicking ass to techno-opera, what’s not to like?

Besson’s career after this had its ups and downs as he often found himself in a producing role, often penning films that either had a mercenary badass rescuing a young lady like Transporter or Taken, or badass ladies kicking ass, like Colombiana (the latter originally meant to be a distant sequel of sorts to today’s subject). Some held up, like the parkour-fest District 13, others were forgettable crud. Besson himself gave us the mediocre Lucy, where Scarlett Johansson finds out that using one hundred per cent of your brain surprisingly turns you into god instead of giving you a huge seizure, and…Valerian. I’ll say that Valerian, a direct adaptation of the comics that inspired Fifth Element, had some fine enough individual components, from the concepts to action scenes, but was far too long and uneven to truly match its predecessor, and leave it at that.

His most recent directorial project appears to be Anna, seemingly an update of sorts of Nikita, and another one named after a female forename. As of writing I've only seen the trailers, but it looks like typical modern action fare of his--and with the main character doing her assassinations in full view of the public at point blank range, I can say Leon's advice of striking from a distance in his own film seems ironically cast aside!

But despite his later career missteps and expanding production companies stretching things thin, Besson still hit that sweet spot with his earlier titles, and Leon is a fine example of that. It didn’t have flying cars and space battleships, it didn’t have Liam Neeson repeatedly growling incomprehensibly into a phone, but it had a great look, it had good casting, and it had Gary Oldman having so much goddamn fun. It does lend itself to the adage that from smaller things, from limitations, comes some fine art.  

So grab yourself some milk and a silenced pistol, and give it a watch. It all boils down to how much élan you’re seeking…