Leon: The Professional
Compiling a list of the greatest child performances in cinema history would be a short one. Obviously Haley Joel Osment in Sixth Sense and Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver come to mind, while others like Peter Billingsley in Christmas Story or Brandon DeWilde in Shane are considered more iconic than high quality given the films they were in. So then it comes down to Natalie Portman’s work in this 1994 film, her screen debut, as being arguably the best of the lot, a performance that combined a rather shocking amount of sensuality with the needed maturity for a 12 year old actress to pull off properly, and in so doing made Foster’s aforementioned work almost pale by comparison. Portman plays the middle daughter of a relatively scumbag family by almost any measure, with a drug dealer father, obvious prostitute stepmother, obnoxious, self absorbed sister, and with only her sweet, innocent baby brother being the saving grace and the one she cares about the most. Early on, we can see signs of how she has already developed through things she has seen and heard, including physical and possibly sexual abuse, along with her parents’ tendency to have sex in places that they can easily be walked in on. One day, when corrupt DEA agents lead a raid under false pretenses and massacre the entire family while she was out shopping, Portman rings the doorbell of a neighbor to avoid detection by the killers, and is let in only to discover that he is actually an ultimate badass mafia hitman. In the title role of Leon (The Professional), that particular hitman, one almost has to feel for Jean Reno, a top flight superstar in France who is usually lucky just to get supporting roles in Hollywood films, because while he does give a very good performance here loaded with subtlety, he winds up being overshadowed by Portman along with the villain of the piece. Regardless, Reno is slick and deadly in the action / killing sequences but in the scenes with Portman we learn that Leon has in actuality an almost childlike mentality, unable to read or write before she teaches him and living the bland, simple life almost to an extreme, with his only connection to the outside world being Danny Aiello as the mob middleman who gives him his assignments while occasionally going to a revival movie house to watch corny old flicks. Nonetheless, it comes across as a quiet, yet intense performance next to Portman shocking the world with her acting skills and Gary Oldman as the evil Head DEA Agent who killed her family and upon whom she seeks revenge. Oldman comes on screen literally with his back turned and sporting a crew that includes a white dreadlocked presumably undercover guy and a very large crew member played by Keith Glascoe, who went on to become a NYPD fireman and died in the World Trade Center on 9/11. But it is Oldman, crunching down on some kind of pill that causes him to have some sort of epileptic fit, acting like he (literally) can get away with anything and everything while having no one to answer to, and showing hints of charming sadism when he teases a potential victim whom he’s about to kill, that almost everyone remembers about the film despite having the least amount of screentime amongst the three principals, with many considering this to be his best villain role (or best performance ever) he has given in a film to date. But the heart and soul of the film remains with Reno and Portman, and as stated, the acting of Portman along with the amazingly perceptive writing brings out what the film is really all about, and that is as a love story, one of pure love between these two characters (which is ironic since writer / director Luc Besson based this relationship on the one between he and his wife, whom he met at 11 and married at 18, and the original script did have overtones of a sexual relationship between the two before Portman’s parents objected). Controversy ensued naturally over the little girl’s involvement with a 40 something year old man, and while Portman’s declaration of love and her sometimes overt advances towards Reno might seem shocking on the surface, anyone that can look around today and see the daily sexualization of children who idolize Miley Cyrus and others will realize that this only scratches the surface of what kids today actually say and think about. Also to be seen as notable is the literal lambasting of Reno’s Leon by the same reactionaries as some kind of pedophile type who seemingly encouraged her behavior. None of that is true of course, if seen by those who actually took the time to watch the film itself. Portman’s character is at times openly manipulative when it comes to testing Reno’s decency and knowing he has a code of honor about such things, at one point even threatening to kill herself if he winds up throwing her out of his life while telling him she loves him when she puts the gun to her head in front of him. But Reno’s Leon really is a man of honor, knowing full well that he would be just as responsible for her death as anyone if he’s not there to protect her, all the while refusing to give in to her to take their relationship to the next level because he’s determined to do the right thing despite him falling in love with her also. And maybe that’s the point of the whole enterprise, that true, real love is one where physical desires take a backseat to two people taking care of each other and sticking together for better or worse, which is when Leon decides to lay his own life and reputation on the line by finally going after and taking out Oldman’s colleagues one by one and even marching into the DEA building in New York City to do so. This of course freaks Oldman out to no end, and sets up the final battle, where Oldman brings in an army of cops and SWAT to take out one man and one little girl, and all of them get more than they bargain for. And with three lead performances like these, including a 12 year old actress going places onscreen no one else has before, it’s easy to see why this has smoothly achieved classic status, with the ultimate irony in hindsight being that Portman has never topped her debut here, spending much of the 90s playing similar girls who teased older men with their sex appeal, before “growing up” and engaging in a neck in neck competition with Angelina Jolie as perhaps the most unlikable actress of the new millennium, with a pretentious, stuck up, real life attitude and persona. Still, we can look back and remember the incredible nature of her performance here, making history in an action masterpiece such as this…
10/10