The Professional (1994, Luc Besson) (Patreon)

45/100

Unpopular opinion time! Actually, it's not clear to me how respected The Professional* now is—apart from new arrival Hamilton and a few Indian films that I should probably investigate at some point, it was the sole title in IMDb's top 100 that I'd never seen...but, then, that's a constituency that considers The Shawshank Redemption cinema's greatest achievement (and Forrest Gump the 12th-greatest movie of all time—'94 was a big year for this crowd). Certainly it didn't get strong reviews at the time, as I'd have rushed out to the theater if it had. Still, my vague sense is that Besson has more moderate fans than he does haters among my peers, and that many will be disappointed that I didn't have more fun with this. Sorry, folks.

No clear consensus emerged when I solicited opinions about whether I should watch the theatrical or extended cut; I went with the former, which (a) got a few more votes/shout-outs and, more importantly, (b) is the version currently streaming on Showtime. Gotta say I'm glad I did—partly because it appears that much of the material Besson cut was on the skeevy side, but mostly because even the shorter cut takes a good 40 minutes just setting up the basic premise, i.e. bringing Léon and Mathilda together. Somehow, it had not occurred to me that a movie starring Jean Reno and an 11-year-old Natalie Portman might embody one of my least favorite cinematic tropes: grumpy non-parent gradually bonds with exasperating child forced by circumstance into his/her exceedingly reluctant care. (One of the many reasons I don't much like Spielberg's adaptation of Jurassic Park is the addition of that dynamic, which is not in the book.) The Professional is by no means the most noxious iteration I've seen, but there's still a fair bit of sap on this tree, at least when Mathilda's not asking Léon to deflower her (which I don't think would help). Besson also leans heavily on what I long ago termed the Fallacy of the Profane Granny—we're repeatedly meant to be shocked when this little girl says "fuck" or fires a gun out the window or otherwise behaves incongruously for her age and expected level of decorum. Spent a lot of time wondering whether I'd have been impressed by Portman had this performance been my introduction to her (in fact it was Heat, then Mars Attacks!, then Everyone Says I Love You, and then I truly got a sense of her when I belatedly caught up with Beautiful Girls, and then I initially skipped the Star Wars prequels and didn't see her onscreen again until Cold Mountain, some six years later, which I don't even recall her being in to be honest, man oh man this is a long parenthetical so let me remind you that before it began I was wondering whether I'd have been impressed by her as Mathilda); my guess is not especially, as she's doing the cutely precocious thing that was more in vogue back then but of which I was already tiring. Like a less wised-up Jodie Foster, and Foster's sardonic quality at that age was absolutely crucial. Pure guilelessness would have been still more effective, I suspect, but, sadly, Elle Fanning was not born in 1981. (I guess Dakota kinda played that role in Man on Fire? Skipped it.)

I have an even more potentially heretical thought about this film's cast, but before I get to that, let me praise Reno, who's easily the best thing in the movie. (Only potential rival: Éric Serra's score. Okay, and maybe the sequence with Léon swinging down from the apartment ceiling.) In theory, he's playing a classic taciturn badass, not too far removed from Delon's samouraï—indeed, the extent to which this film plays like Le Samouraï meets Paper Moon is my primary issue with it. But Reno, without sacrificing an ounce of tough-guy charisma, gives Léon a slightly childlike quality himself. Some of that affect may simply reflect the minor awkwardness of not working in his native language, but the goofy way Léon's face lights up as he watches It's Always Fair Weather is a deliberate choice, and one that genuinely feels revealing here, rather than serving as a cinephile-director's version of virtue-signaling. (I'm glaring at you, The Shape of Water.) You can see just a smidgen of the gentle courtliness he'd later deploy in Margaret, leaking out from the requisite gruff exterior. He's terrific, and I don't blame him for having trouble selling a spell-it-out line like "You've given me a taste for life." Any more than I blame the actor playing the lead cop for apparently not considering that Mathilda might deliberately give him the wrong signal knock, because duh.

Okay, heresy time. Do I consider Gary Oldman a great actor? I'm no longer sure that I do. Maybe that was just received wisdom. I gather that Stansfield is considered one of his iconic performances, but to me he comes across here, and in True Romance, and in Bram Stoker's Dracula, and in Air Force One—throughout the '90s, really—as Nicolas Cage minus the deranged conviction. Just kind of a ham, frankly. Not that far removed from the superficial showboating that finally won him the Oscar a few years ago. In any case, I rolled my eyes when Stansfield launched into an outré-yet-clichéd mid-rampage monologue about classical composers, and winced at most of Oldman's seemingly improvised twitches and grimaces and bizarro modulations of tone. Samuel L. Jackson shrewdly underplays Jules' threatening erudition; Oldman underlines how craaaaazy Stansfield's is, as if playing to the groundlings. He bugged me so much here that I paused the film and looked at his résumé, to see what I'd cite as a truly great Gary Oldman performance. And the only ones that really leapt out at me were all very early on: Meantime, Sid and Nancy, maybe Prick Up Your Ears (though I haven't seen that one in decades). Plenty of respectable work after that, but nothing to which I'd likely allot (or indeed have allotted) Skandies points, and a whole lot of sweaty idiosyncrasy along these lines. I dunno, tell me I'm wrong. I'm willing to be persuaded. Probably not re: this performance, though.

Notes I couldn't fit into any of the paragraphs above:

• Besson needs a writer. Four minutes into this movie, two different characters have uttered the deathless words "We got company!" They actually speak them back-to-back!

• Mathilda doing impersonations of Madonna, Marilyn and Chaplin is just embarrassing. Maybe there's more of a Del Toro vibe than I previously suggested. Where's she supposed to have picked up a love for old movie stars? From Michael Badalucco? Even "Like a Virgin" came out when she was all of three years old.

• At one point, there's a montage during which we see Léon in the shower, sewing up a wound in his chest. Did I miss something there? Did not see how he got wounded; the preceding scene is him giving Mathilda the dress. As far as I can tell, this isn't residue from a scene that's only in the extended version, and I can't find evidence online of anyone else being confused by it. So I must have missed something, but sure beats me what. 

• Ah, 1994, when a self-respecting action movie could earnestly conclude with Sting's "Shape of My Heart." 

* ANAL-RETENTIVE TITLE CORNER: Apparently there's been a shift toward combining the original and U.S. titles, so that e.g. IMDb now calls it Léon: The Professional. But it was released simply as The Professional here, so unless it eventually becomes known simply as Léon (à la A Matter of Life and Death, which took decades to conclusively shake Stairway to Heaven), I'm sticking with that. No chance I'll ever go with the hybrid version—that's just dumb.