Sadly Over-hyped

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

Always on top of it. Reno is a unique talent and face, someone you never forget.

It is one of the most overrated movies of all times. I don't mean it's bad, but it's not as great as people claim it to be. It is a good and a little different type of crime drama. But, speaking of 90s crime dramas and mob films, "Goodfellas", "Pulp Fiction", "The Usual Suspects", "Se7en", "Reservoir Dogs", etc are much better than this movie, at least for me. But still a lot better majority of crime movies today. The main theme - the relationship between Leon and Mathilda - mostly satisfying and very well written and directed. That is something I really loved. But at the same time, a part of that relationship is quite a mixed bag for me. (SPOILERS) Mathilda falls in love with Leon and asks him for intimacy. As much as I admire Besson's decision, it feels unusually weird. Plus, Natalie Portman was just around 12 or 13 years old, and there were some perverted shots of her in the movie that I didn't really want to see. The Leon-Mathilda plotline, except for this part, was quite good. And which means almost more than a half of the movie was good. Mathilda becoming a hitman plotline - the motivation felt a little forced to me, her training sessions were finely entertaining but ..... where and how did it really end? More than becoming a real hitman (probably she did in the montage sequence) we only get to see her do some crazy teenager stuffs. And, one of my biggest issues - Mathilda wanting a revenge on Stan plotline. It would have been a better movie if this one and the first plotline I mentioned were equally a major part of the movie. But, the movie deviates from this a lot. We get reminded about this part when Gary Oldman shows up. This was one of the main parts of the plot, but didn't really feel like one. Also, Stan is a simple crazy psycho-ish villain with nothing much of depth to him. The first plotline worked for me in the way it did, mostly because of the amazing performances of Jean Reno and Natalie Portman. They were very great. Leon was written very carefully. And ........ Gary Oldman ......... I love the man as an actor, he is amazing in most of the his movies I have watched. May be his performances in "Darkest Hour" and as Commissioner Gordon in Dark Knight Trilogy are my favorite Gary Oldman performances. I haven't seen all of his movies, but this is by far the worst Gary Oldman performance I have ever seen. A part of it is to be blamed on Besson, but nothing can be taken away from Oldman. He simply hams up the performance. On the whole, it's a very enjoyable movie and has it's goods and has it's flaws. Not bad at all. It's good. But it feels like hypocrisy to have this movie as the 30th highest rated movie on IMDb. It gets a "B" and a "6.7/10".

In retrospect, I am happy to say that I am one of those who welcomes technology but I am not a slave to it. I can only wish for the younger generation to have been able to enjoy like we did until FB came coupled with the selfie sticks. The movie watching generation of now are quite limited in what they see, surprisingly not because there were not too many films but on the contrary you have zillions of things to watch out of boredom and everyone can be a superstar in YouTube. Lamentably, they are not accustomed to films like this. The duo of a battered child and a hired gun is action filled, yet we laugh with them and cry with them. Natalie Portman as the young , slightly irritating Mathilda is gifted with talent. Jean Reno as the distant yet fatherly figure of a pro killer is captivating in his role. They and the plant will entertain you ( like it did for us ) .

When her family are slaughtered by a corrupt DEA officer and his men, a 12 year old girl takes refuge in a neighbour's apartment. A neighbour who it turns out is a professional hitman. She soon convinces him to train her to be his protégée.This was French director Luc Besson's first American movie. It is a follow up of sorts to his earlier chic action-thriller Nikita (1990), with Jean Reno essentially reprising his role of a cleaner (professional assassin), although in this one he is playing a different actually character. Like all Besson's movies there is considerable style brought to the table with the action sequences once again particularly well-delivered. But perhaps the true revelation of the movie is Natalie Portman who puts in an extremely strong performance for such a young actress, full of charisma, humour and emotional depth. She plays off well against Reno, who is also impressive. Gary Oldman, on the other hand, is pretty grating and annoying mostly as the main villain, a character who is cartoonish and somewhat ridiculous overall.While I do find this film good quality for the most part, with great action sequences and some interesting characterisations, I have to express serious reservations about the director's cut, where Portman's young character is constantly trying to get Reno to sleep with her. Its majorly uncomfortable stuff and really entirely unnecessary. And while Léon does spurn her advances, it's never really very clear that he rejects her for entirely the right reasons. Seemingly in the original script, the characters do actually end up sleeping together, which we can only be grateful never actually made the final cut but it does make you wonder what Besson was thinking with all this questionable stuff. My advice would be to avoid the director's cut and watch this one in the trimmed version, which removes all this contentious material.