LÉON: THE PROFESSIONAL (1994)

French writer/director Luc Besson hit mainstream Stateside markets on his sixth film, made in English, Manhattan-set, revealing immense technical facility in spite of losing 30 minutes.  Long returned to international release length (two & a quarter hours), its influence on pulpy violence, off-beat comic tics & suspense self-evident.  Yet now playing quite differently than it did at the time.  A prologue sets up taciturn, solitary Jean Reno as hit man extraordinaire as he grudgingly grows attached to unlikely 12-yr-old survivor Natalie Portman, her family wiped out in a drug-related massacre at the apartment down the hall.  Warming to each other, he finds something of a family in the girl; she falls for this big grownup killer, it’s LE SAMOURAÏ meets THE KID.*  (Had it been made in France, intimations of LOLITA would have suggested a third film.)  With showy turns from Gary Oldman as a cold-blooded, drug-juiced mega-dealer with city connections and Danny Aiello as a back-of-the-scenes string-pulling controller playing all sides of the equation, Besson larks thru a series of jobs, largely avoiding excessive gore.  (Less Noises-Off than Violence-Off.)  What’s changed, and not for the better, is that Portman’s enthusiastic helpmate no longer a surprise, her feral act now expected and devoid of shock value.  It significantly unbalances the careful mix of carnage & comedy . . . or rather, it doesn’t unbalance the mix, leaving the film without the tang, texture & wisps of credulity it once had.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK: Bravo to Besson for incorporating a clip from Gene Kelly/Stanley Donen’s underrated musical IT’S ALWAYS FAIR WEATHER/’55.  Though even in ‘90s NYC, no revival house would have played a morning show. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/its-always-fair-weather-1955.html

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Make it a triple bill with LE SAMOURAÏ/’67 and THE KID/’21 (that’s 1921). https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/11/le-samourai-1967.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-kid-1921.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Reno seems to exist on nothing but glasses of whole milk, something that surely would have indelicately interrupted a hit or two.