2022-10-14
“I want to have roots”
For a very long time, Leon was my favourite film of all time. It’s an ultra-stylish hitman thriller set in New York that’s also a moving story about that same hitman being forced to adopt his 12 year old neighbour and then train her when her family is slaughtered by a corrupt policeman.
Leon combines Luc Besson’s signature of striking images, very French music and melodrama with American action movie tropes- shootouts and explosions. As a cocktail there’s nothing quite like it. It’s exciting, funny, sensitive and sad. It also helps that the three main actors are wonderful; Jean Reno is sensitive as Leon, Oldman is gnawing on the scenery so intensely it’s kind of scary, and Portman in her film debut shows the kind of maturity that lets you believe a young girl could want to become a hitman’s protege.
The version here is the so-called “Version Longue”. It’s not so much a director’s cut as it is an extended version, and it alters the tone of the film quite noticeably. What was hinted at in the original is much more explicit here, so we now see Matilda’s hit training in much more detail and it delves more into the uncomfortable and a little weird romantic attachment Matilda develops for Leon. Whether this is an improvement or not is a matter of taste. I say it’s a bit like reading the authors notes on a book you love, so it deepened my appreciation of how lean and perfectly calibrated the original was.