Leon - The Director's Cut [Blu-ray]

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Léon: The Professional [a] is a 1994 English-language French action-thriller film [6] [7] [8] [9] written and directed by Luc Besson. That’s because Leon is a hitman, and getting on the authorities’ radar, even crooked authorities isn’t in his interest.

There’s only so much time in the world, and there are so many movies that are definitive in their genre, that mark special moments in time, that revolutionise cinema, or are just simply that good that it is impossible to see them all. However, in the meantime, Besson left Gaumont Film Company to start his own movie studio, EuropaCorp. When Léon was eighteen in Italy, he fell in love with a girl from a wealthy family, but Léon's family was poor. Léon is a hitman (or "cleaner", as he refers to himself) working for a mafioso named "Old Tony" in the Little Italy neighborhood of New York City. This version is 26 minutes longer than the previously released version and includes, amongst others, one sequence that was removed from the film after the disastrous tests with L.There is an extended version of the film, referred to as "international version", " version longue", or " version intégrale". The New York Times ' Janet Maslin wrote, " The Professional is much too sentimental to sound shockingly amoral in the least. In that case, you’re likely wondering just why this new release of a 25-year-old film would be worth your time. Léon killed the father in revenge and fled to New York, where he met Tony and trained to become a hitman.

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".In the version released in India, the censors insisted on cutting certain scenes which included Matilda smoking on the stairs, a man pressing the breasts of the woman, 50% reduction in expressions on Stansfield's face after he consumes the drug capsule, 30% reduction in the shootout in the flat, the shooting by Stansfield at the dying man crawling on the floor, the scene where Leon teaches Matilda to use a telescopic gun and the subsequent visuals of her actually selecting a target and killing him ruthlessly in accordance with the shooting lesson, and Matilda's lines "He is my lover' and 'Shut the fuck up', before giving the film an A (adults only) rating. It’s a masterpiece of mainstream cinema that twists all the conventions on their heads, and still manages to thrill, enthral, and move, even now 25 years past its original release. At first, Léon is unsettled by her presence and considers killing her in her sleep but he eventually trains Mathilda and shows her how to use various weapons. She’s out getting groceries the day the crooked DEA agents pay her father a visit, looking for some missing dope, and wind up killing her family.

English audio track with optional English subtitles, and I have to say that the film looks spectacular. As for the director’s cut element of this Leon release, this is the same director’s cut first seen in 2004 that adds 23 minutes of footage to the movie. For those not familiar with Leon, the basic crux of the matter centres on clinical hitman Leon (Reno) and young Mathilda (Portman). The only light in her family is her little brother, while the only person who notices her is the man who lives down the hall from her apartment.

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". Maïwenn, Luc Besson's sixteen year old wife at the time of filming, says the film was inspired by their relationship. It’s left to niche entertainment like anime, to try and emulate it, but they’ll never have quite the same impact.