Viking Night: The Professional
By Bruce Hall
March 20, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
It's the reason why the film known in America as The Professional is elsewhere simply called: Leon.
And Leon (Jean Reno) gets himself a James Bond opening - if James Bond was an Italian with a French accent, lived on milk instead of martinis, and had an ironic fondness for high water pants, peace lilies and Gene Kelly films. He is a professional hit man in the employ of a shady restaurateur (Danny Aiello, being Danny Aiello) in Manhattan's Little Italy. Leon is a gifted killer, as methodical and efficient as a ninja. And he does it all without ever leaving his feet, breaking a sweat or making a sound. But it's okay, since he also happens to have a heart of gold. You know how it is in the movies. Hookers, lunatics, hit men - it's all good as long as you're a genuinely nice person inside.
And boy, is Leon a really nice guy. He lives the quiet life of a bachelor assassin, doting over his plant and drinking milk by the gallon. He works out regularly, cleans his guns and sleeps upright each night in a creaky chair with one eye open. Sound like a party? Just wait till you meet his neighbor. Down the hall lives a precocious little girl named Mathilda (Natalie Portman, in her first role) who loves Madonna, Transformers, lollipops and Camel cigarettes.
She lives in a crappy two bedroom flat with her dirtbag drug dealing father (Michael Badalucco, guidette mother (Ellen Greene) and slutty sister (Elizabeth Regen). Dysfunctional isn't quite the word for them; they make the cast of Jersey Shore look like Rhodes Scholars. And yet somehow, Mathilda is the most comparatively well adjusted of the bunch. Still, she's little more than an unpleasant afterthought to her family, like a half healed scab or an ingrown toenail. The only one she's close to is her four year old brother.
Leon and Mathilda are informal acquaintances. They see each other in the hall from time to time when he returns home from shooting people in the face, and she is taking a break from getting socked in the same place by her dad. There's a particularly significant moment early in the film where Leon finds her in the hall, a bloody and dejected mess. She poignantly asks: "Is life always this hard, or just when you're a kid?" He calmly reassures her that things are always going to suck like this and of course, we're meant to sympathize with two people who seem not to have asked for the lives they live. It's the first important dramatic beat of the film, and it becomes clear that Mathilda has been observing her reclusive neighbor.
What's equally clear is that Leon can sense the madness in the child's life from the other end of the hall, but he's a busy man with lots of people to kill. And milk to drink. Plus, that peace lily isn't going to water itself. But their routine is interrupted when Mathilda's father runs afoul of a corrupt DEA agent named Stan (Gary Oldman, turning it up to 11) who's been paying him to stash illicit drugs. One day, Stan shows up while Mathilda is out buying ding dongs for her ditzy mom and slaughters the entire family - including the four year old boy.
I'm gonna tell you something now, because this is an important part of all Luc Besson movies that star Gary Oldman. Stan is so crazy even the other cops go all brown trousers around him. It's as if they're only along for the ride just to avoid being made into fleshy Halloween masks by their deranged commander. The Professional was made during what I like to call Gary Oldman's "red" - during which he could chew scenery right alongside Al Pacino without breaking a sweat. Stan is less a realistic villain than he is another type of catalyst - one meant to drive Leon toward change.
And this, he does.
Mathilda comes home while Stan and his goons are still crawling over the place, and keenly proceeds to Leon's door quietly sobbing, begging inside. She's been expecting this, and expecting Leon to be there when it did. He is, and here we have the second important dramatic beat of the movie. We discover that Leon is a simple, illiterate man with a penchant for following orders - most likely how he ended up a contract killer - and that Mathilda is a bright, emotionally fractured child who needs someone to avenge the death of her brother. It isn't hatred of Stan, but concern for Mathilda that causes Leon to consider her proposal, but the thought of having someone to protect intrigues him. She is less a reason to kill than she is a reason to live.
Interesting stuff, but this would be a hard story to tell without all the violence and death.
To some, it might seem demented to enjoy a movie about a middle aged man who teaches a 12-year-old girl how to use a sniper rifle. To that I plead guilty, your honor. The thing is, this is not a crime drama. Or even a story about revenge. This is a story about a mature yet troubled child and a childlike older man who discover a common pain, and thereby grow past their crippling, life defining obstacles. They learn to live, love, yadda yadda. And it works - particularly in the director's cut, which spends a great deal more time on the relationship between Leon and Mathilda.
Of course, how YOU feel about it may depend on your personal tolerance for 12-year-old girls hitting on men three times their age.
Besson is a subversively perverse, deceptively clever storyteller with a strong sense of how to construct a compelling narrative. In my opinion, he's also a slightly sick man who works a lot of his sickness out on film. I'm kind of glad he does because I'm convinced that most of his work is either biographical or some kind of dissident fetish. I'm guessing both. I wonder if the male protagonists in most of Besson's films aren't meant to be Besson himself (See Subway, The Fifth Element, et all). I don't blame him; if I were talented enough to write action screenplays, I'd probably make myself the hero as well. Except I would look more like Vin Diesel and less like me.
I guess it's all a matter of taste.
Which reminds me… a lot of hands have been wrung over the involvement of a child in an R-rated murder-fest replete with psycho drug dealers and John Wu-style ultra-violence. My thoughts on this are simple. There are movies like Kick-Ass, where the child seems gratuitous, and there are movies like this one. Leon is very good at what he does, but that's only because he's been doing it for so long. There is no meaning, no larger purpose to his existence or to his work, and this clearly pains him. He is trapped without being sure why, and he's powerless to change it because he doesn't know how. This is a story about a man who requires a purpose and a child who requires a savior. Mathilda is a plot device.
Reno plays his part with the subtlety of an experienced pantomime, Portman is a revelation, and Gary Oldman…well…is on crack. And it's all as satisfying as a turkey club sandwich on wheat bread with applewood smoked bacon and spicy brown mustard. It may be Besson's best work.
Leon didn't have to be an assassin, Gary Oldman didn't have to be a deranged psycho killer, and Natalie Portman didn't have to be a wounded Lolita. It's just (apparently) the only kind of movie Luc Besson knows how to make. Except in this case Jean Reno is the hero, but Natalie Portman is the MacGuffin - and an especially important one. We don't know why Leon became the man he is, or why he must suffer to become the man he must be. But there's a reason for it - and she's every bit the adult he is. Not to mention, pretty good with a gun herself.