The Professional (1994)
DIRECTOR: Luc Besson
CAST: Jean Reno, Gary Oldman, Natalie Portman, Danny Aiello
REVIEW:
From French director Luc Besson (La Femme Nikita) comes this distinctly European-flavored action thriller that boasts some kinetic action sequences but has at its core an unlikely relationship between a lonely hitman and a young girl.
Leon (Jean Reno) is a “cleaner”, a hitman for Little Italy mobster Tony (Danny Aiello). The only flicker of human interaction in Leon’s solitary life are his fleeting encounters with Mathilda (Natalie Portman), a twelve-year-old girl in his apartment building. Mathilda comes from a dysfunctional family—her father (Michael Badalucco) slaps her around and has gotten into trouble dealing drugs with crooked DEA agent Norman Stansfield (Gary Oldman in full scenery-chewing mode)—and one day while she’s out for milk, Stansfield and his goon squad show up and massacre everyone except her, including her little brother (the only one she cares about), leaving Mathilda ringing Leon’s buzzer. The hitman reluctantly lets her in, and she proceeds to worm her way into his closed-off heart while seeking to apprentice under him as a “cleaner” to eventually take revenge on Stansfield.
Despite being set in New York City, there’s a decidedly European flavor and a slightly off-kilter vibe to the proceedings; it’s stylized, darkly humorous, morally ambiguous, and almost artsy, while still serving up enough conventional action and bloodshed to appeal to fans of the genre. Some viewers might be disturbed by Mathilda’s penchant for profanity, as well as the fact that the ostensible father/daughter relationship is also laced with occasional hints of sexual attraction on her end (this is more overt in a director’s cut later released by Besson). It follows many of the same themes and even some narrative beats of Besson’s La Femme Nikita, which dealt with a teenage girl who becomes an assassin (Nikita even also had Jean Reno as a “cleaner”). The Professional is not strictly rooted in reality. While the beginning and ending bravura action sequences are kinetic and tension-infused, they also lend Leon virtually supernatural powers in his ability to be anywhere at any given moment, physics be damned. But the surprisingly well-developed character interaction between Leon and Mathilda provides something to appreciate for viewers willing to look beyond all the bloodshed.
Jean Reno’s dour, stoic portrayal of Leon almost verges on playing him as an idiot savant, a preternaturally skilled hitman but simple and uneducated everywhere else, and closed-off and unaccustomed to any meaningful human interaction (his simple, solitary life is developed in early scenes, where he takes meticulous care of his beloved potted plant, occasionally indulges himself by staring with childlike awe at the song-and-dance routines of Gene Kelly, and sleeps sitting up in his chair in the dark, with his sunglasses on). Gary Oldman is second-billed, but his screentime is limited, only bursting into the movie in sporadic spurts of eccentric scenery-devouring. Stansfield is a strange creation unto himself, a crooked cop and degenerate drug addict and classical music fan who makes his entrance creepily sniffing a man up and down to “smell” if he’s lying about their drug deal, and for his second appearance blows away the man’s whole family in between sharing his thoughts on Beethoven. The off-the-wall way Oldman plays Stansfield (he swallows mystery pills with a bizarre, snakelike spasm) is enjoyable in a hammy kind of way, but it’s also almost distracting, like he’s blown in from some whole other movie from everything going on around him (something like the way Alan Rickman in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves seems to be in his own movie unto himself). Easily the most notable performance (and in some ways the real protagonist) is twelve-year-old Natalie Portman, whose Mathilda has to show by far the most emotional range of any character in the movie. In some ways, she recalls Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver, a tough-talking, streetwise woman-child, but given more central focus. And Mathilda is no wide-eyed innocent; she probably swears the most of anyone in the movie and aspires to become a hitwoman to exact bloody revenge for the death of her little brother (she couldn’t care less about her other family members). But despite her attempts at toughness, there’s times where she’s reduced to a scared, vulnerable child. It’s a tricky, probably controversial role, and Portman pulls it off. No one else has much to do; Danny Aiello is your basic “affable mobster” type as Leon’s boss (with a generic mobster name, Tony), and Michael Badalucco and Ellen Greene (Little Shop of Horrors’ Audrey) are Mathilda’s less-than-parental parents.
The Professional might not be everyone’s cup of tea; some will be turned off by the bloody violence, especially considering it places a twelve-year-old girl in harm’s way and sets her up as both an aspiring hitwoman and a budding Lolita, and its quirky European sensibilities give a slightly but markedly different flavor from your average Hollywood action movie. But it serves up bravura beginning and ending action sequences, and fills the space in between with a nicely-developed unlikely bond that provides a little heart, and both of those qualities make The Professional worth watching.
* * *