Should I Pay For My Own Wedding?

Léon - Director's Cut

I like these calm little moments before a storm. It reminds me of Beethoven.

A day like any other could have been. Dope enough at the start, the preferred prostitute at hand, even before a relaxing massage. As it suddenly cracks in Walkie-talkie. A message that a shot. Panic is spreading. "Somebody's coming up Somebody serious", pressed Fatman (Frank Senger), as the writer calls him out. In the face of danger, one of his men still draws a line of coke in the nose, while outside in the hallway to die already the first fellow. One is flying headlong down the staircase, the other being strangled. Meanwhile Eric Serra takes on composition of pace is faster, louder, more present and it represents the main character, seen previously only in outline.

The protagonist is Leon (Jean Reno), set for the U.S. and German theatrical release with the nickname "The Professional" respectively "The Professional". Léon is precise, mellow, cool. And as soon as he came, he disappears again. As he enters his apartment complex, leads the camera on the second main character. Childlike xylophone music accompanies the vertical camera pan to the 12-year-old Mathilda (Natalie Portman), whose youthful image is hindered by the Cigarette she smokes. "I'm already grown up," Mathilda reveals later. "I'm just getting older". It is the middle child in a dysfunctional family, hated by her half-sister and step-mother, because a symbol of an affair of the father who punishes them for it with shots.

"Is life always this hard or just when you're a kid?" Asks Mathilda with her bleeding nose Léon. She has no idea that their insubordination save her life that morning, and place both the sword of Damocles over Léons fate. Because their half-sister she did not want to see let Transformers , instead turn to their exercise program, and Matilda refused to buy for the family, it gets a beating again. It is Leon helpfulness which means that they will bring him milk and during the robbery of a corrupt DEA agent Stansfield (Gary Oldman) on Mathilda's father - a little gangster, Stansfield and his men brought by ten percent of their substance - absent .

Stansfield perfected in turn is a sociopath. On drugs, he stormed into the apartment of the blended family and executed the first mother, then daughter, before ultimately less Mathilda Half-brother and her father have to believe it. Stanfield himself compares the situation with Beethoven: powerful at the beginning and then weakly in the financial statements. The making of the film shows how Oldman extended the original scene in any setting before the finished product was present imitative of piano playing, which has made it into Léon . Stanfield is in the best manner by Luc Besson Auteur oversubscribed, as he rushes blindly a residential building, shoots wildly, children executed, and even shooting at the neighbors. Powerful at the beginning, tired with a qualification. is

For Leon, the potted plant, the only living creature that in its environment tolerate ("It's my best friend. Always happy. No questions"), takes place all this in a different world. Until this world at a time to ring with watery eyes at the door begins. Think fast Mathilda has recognized the threat by Stan Fields and Leon identified the presence of flat at the end of the corridor as the only salvation. "Please open the door. Please "she pleaded with tearful eyes as she repeatedly pressed the bell to Léons apartment. The scene is the fateful fork in both figures, opening the door to open at the same time symbolic of a new world respectively, for the merger of two worlds that should not merge.

When the door finally opens, Mathilda is embedded by a redemptive flood light. It is their salvation in this sensitive moment, yet the salvation from a dreary life as it has ever known. Also noteworthy Léons first act when he gets his disguise as a pig oven mitt from the kitchen to the cheer in shock standing Mathilda. Was the supercooled Italian with the big balding minutes earlier in the corridor of life of adults have the rollers to the inlet of Mathilda are now reversed. Léon, the "brutal killer with the emotional core of a child" it is now that responds while the action is determined by the 12-year-olds who longs for revenge. off

your suggestion, Stanfield and his unit for them, Leon rejects itself off then when Mathilda the necessary business assets ("Five grand a head") on the table. "Revenge is not a good thing, it's better to forget," has the assassin to the girl, from motives in the third act of the Director's Cut are finally clear. In view of the denied service requires Mathilda to be constructed for itself by Léon killer and gives the request with a Shot volley from the windows according to emphasis. Reluctantly, is to the Italians. "Change is not good," then reminds him of his employer and patron Mafia Tony (Danny Aiello), but Leon has been the friendship and Mathilda already "a taste for life," won.

That relationship is the central element of the film. For Léon is Mathilda is a friend, for in his lonely life had been no place. And for the 12-year-old Léon awaited the father figure and protector, to which it projected in its Oedipal stage is their idea of sexuality ("I think I'm kinda falling in love with you "). It would be the first time that someone actually cares about Matilda and provides, apart from her little half-brother, who represented her only anchor in her deceased family. Léon that she, unlike her real father, for not punishing misconduct physically, plays the one in their confidence to the killer, but the other, to provide a measure of independence, which it seems (still) not equal.

Unlike the movie version places the original version cut a greater focus on the relationship between Léon and Mathilda. This eventually takes part in Léons simpler contracts and will he taught at the same time, while another scene again takes up the feelings of Mathilda and the sexual tension between the characters is achieved by a little. Significantly, this scene due to the Laughter sexually prudish American test audiences fell victim to the scissors. It is debatable whether the many, the focus is not on the romantic relationship between Léon and Mathilda legends scenes easily get redundant - so special is the restaurant scene is too long - yet they are essential to capture the essence of Léon .

Although the plot is action-packed and well and just is determined at the beginning as in the finale of this, it Besson succeeds best to integrate comic buffer. Whether subtly the milk ritual by Léon that sounds like a diet tip a mother who died long ago and far too early, the celebrities rates with excellent launched protagonists or the ironic embedding that Mathilda ultimately by the "male" sit-ups by Léon gymnastics program that replaced it never previously indulged her half-sister. Another, albeit threatening connotations loosening found in the most theatrical, but probably just so very effective playing of Gary Oldman's eccentric Stanfield.

It is without question the benefits of the three main characters, which ensure that Léon despite its exaggerated character works so well. Beginning with Jean Reno's wonderfully naive game of the supposedly icy killer with principles ("No women, no kids") and an affinity for film by Gene Kelly, to the debut performance of young Natalie Portman, in view of their screen tests a huge jump in the finished film has made, who could apply for many years as its flagship portfolio, with before Black Swan delivers a similarly strong performance. Not only by the now existing impression would Léon with then also interested Mel Gibson Keanu Reeves believed possible.

for Reno, it was the final collaboration, directed by Besson and probably also the best and most memorable figure of his career. His Léon is a loving yet menacing figure, perfectly nuanced by the native Moroccans. layer "a brutal killer with the emotional core of a child". That Léon merely as filler between Besson Nikita and The Fifth Element arose while the former become the inspiration, the marginal note. What remains is an emotional thriller about two characters who could not be more different and yet they were created for each other, and a tale of two worlds that should not merge, but it did. But as Tony rightly said: "One thing has nothin 'to do with the other".

9 / 10