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

Product Information

It is the most electrifying performance I have seen from Gary Oldman, this edgy, wired, unpredictable sociopath. At Metacritic, the film received an average score of 64 out of 100 based on 12 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". He picks up a 12 year old girl after she is orphaned in a brutal fashion, takes her in, and starts to teach her his trade, how to kill, even taking her on jobs.

Léon and Mathilda form an unusual relationship, as she becomes his protégée and learns the hitman's trade. Léon: The Professional is to some extent an expansion of an idea in Besson's earlier 1990 film, La Femme Nikita (in some countries Nikita). She seeks shelter with lone hitman Leon (Reno) and, when she learns his profession, demands he train her so she can avenge the slaying of her family.The site's critics consensus reads, "Pivoting on the unusual relationship between seasoned hitman and his 12-year-old apprentice—a breakout turn by young Natalie Portman—Luc Besson's Léon is a stylish and oddly affecting thriller. It is the best Luc Besson film that I have seen to date, combining a box office crowd pleaser with art-house sensibilities.

It took me 25 years, but I have now finally seen Leon, also known as The Professional, alongside Trainspotting, Pulp Fiction and The Matrix, one of those films that really exemplified cinema of the 1990s. When Léon was eighteen in Italy, he fell in love with a girl from a wealthy family, but Léon's family was poor. To celebrate this landmark, Studiocanal has put together a new 4K release of the director’s cut of Leon.format in the audio menu, but the rest of the extras are conventionally in the extras menu, and it looks like they are taken from previous releases.

While most of the interior footage was shot in France, the rest of the film was shot on location in New York City. The image quality of this Blu-ray is astounding, and if the audio glitch is confined to the check disc, then this is another must own release.I do have every intention of getting around to watching them; it’s just getting around to it that is hard. One of his men arrives and informs him that Léon killed Malky, one of the corrupt DEA agents, in Chinatown that morning. I wish I had seen it back in the nineties, and shared the experience of discovering this amazing concoction of popular cinema. After Mathilda’s family are brutally murdered by a rogue and erratic DEA agent (Oldman), the 12-year-old seeks solace with the grizzled assassin and manages to convince Leon to reluctantly train her so that she can take her own bloody revenge. It seems absolutely crazy to think that Luc Besson’s Leon is now celebrating 25 years since its initial release, but it is indeed 25 years and counting since this iconic movie was first released in 1994.

That Leon actually notices her where her family does not creates a connection, and when Leon is the only one left to turn to, it’s almost inevitable that connection turns to affection, her first crush.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.