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Starring |
Jean Reno
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Natalie Portman
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Gary Oldman
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Danny Aiello
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Directed By |
Luc Besson
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Audio
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Dolby Digital 5.1
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Visuals
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2.35:1 Anamorphic Widescreen
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Running Time |
133 mins
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UK Release Date |
September 28, 2009
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Genre |
Drama, Thriller
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Our Rating |
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User Rating |
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What is it about Leon? 15 years after it was first released, Luc Besson’s tale of the friendship between Jean Reno’s milk swigging, Gene Kelly loving assassin and a vulnerable young girl (Natalie Portman), retains a definite hold on the popular imagination. Indeed, it is still not only the best film of Besson’s career but in a decade packed with violent high quality thrillers – Goodfellas, Pulp Fiction and LA Confidential to name just three – it still stands up as one of the best films of the 1990s
Of course, were Leon purely about Leon himself, it is doubtful the film would retain its classic status: Reno had, in fact, already played a similar character in Besson’s earlier Nikita. No, it is undoubtedly the powerful and sensitively handled relationship between Leon and his 12-year-old charge Mathilda, who he takes under his wing after her (generally unpleasant) family are brutally murdered by a combination of corrupt cops and Gary Oldman’s pill popping Beethoven-obsessed detective, that gives the film it’s heart. It is perhaps an indictment of our society that it is the definite sexual undercurrent between Mathilda and Leon and not the film’s graphic violence that remains it’s most controversial feature.
That said, Natalie Portman’s’ first leading role remains astonishing to the extent that even in a subsequent career as distinguished as hers, nothing she’s ever done since has quite matched it.
This extended version of the film contains round 24 minutes of extra footage mostly centring on the developing the relationship between Leon and Mathilda. While arguably some of the extra scenes risk sentimentalising the whole thing, the overall effect is to generally enhance the emotional impact of an already powerful film.
A pity then that more effort wasn’t made with the special features. All of the accompanying short features focusing on the film, Portman and Reno are fine, but none are new to DVD and all are a good five years old.
However, even if you already own Leon in its theatrical release form, this is undeniably the superior cut and thus is well worth seeking out.
Overall Verdict: More Reno, more Portman in an extended cut of a modern classic which is happily firmly on target.
Special Features:
Trailer
‘10 Year Retrospective’ Feature
‘Natalie Portman: Starting Young’ Featurette
‘Jean Reno: The Road to Leon’ Featurette
Reviewer: Chris Hallam
