As for the director’s cut element of this Leon release, this is the same director’s cut first seen in 2004 that adds 23 minutes of footage to the movie. One day, Léon meets Mathilda Lando, a lonely twelve-year-old who lives with her dysfunctional family in an apartment down the hall from Léon, and has stopped attending class at her school for troubled girls.

The only light in her family is her little brother, while the only person who notices her is the man who lives down the hall from her apartment. Interview Jean Reno lasts 6:44, and Interview Eric Serra lasts 10:03 and these two featurettes are in HD.English audio track with optional English subtitles, and I have to say that the film looks spectacular. I wish I had seen it back in the nineties, and shared the experience of discovering this amazing concoction of popular cinema. She seeks shelter with lone hitman Leon (Reno) and, when she learns his profession, demands he train her so she can avenge the slaying of her family.

In what is essentially an exercise—a slick urban thriller—it seems to exploit the youth of the girl without really dealing with it. It was commercially successful in Japan, being certified gold for 100,000 copies shipped in December 1999. Unquestionably, Leon is an absolute masterpiece with some jaw-dropping performances from Natalie Portman, Jean Reno, and a turned-up-to-11 Gary Oldman.

I do have every intention of getting around to watching them; it’s just getting around to it that is hard. She begs him to take care of her and to teach her his skills, as she wants to avenge the murder of her four-year-old brother. In the 2013 book, Poseur: A Memoir of Downtown New York City in the '90s, Marc Spitz wrote that the film is "considered a cult classic". In the version released in India, the censors insisted on cutting certain scenes which included Matilda smoking on the stairs, a man pressing the breasts of the woman, 50% reduction in expressions on Stansfield's face after he consumes the drug capsule, 30% reduction in the shootout in the flat, the shooting by Stansfield at the dying man crawling on the floor, the scene where Leon teaches Matilda to use a telescopic gun and the subsequent visuals of her actually selecting a target and killing him ruthlessly in accordance with the shooting lesson, and Matilda's lines "He is my lover' and 'Shut the fuck up', before giving the film an A (adults only) rating.

Unhappy at Besson's departure, Gaumont Film Company "has held The Professional rights close to the vest – and will not budge".

After Mathilda’s family are brutally murdered by a rogue and erratic DEA agent (Oldman), the 12-year-old seeks solace with the grizzled assassin and manages to convince Leon to reluctantly train her so that she can take her own bloody revenge. Hal Hinson, of The Washington Post, also praised Oldman's acting, saying "Reno plays it minimally; Oldman splatters his performance all over the screen. One of his men arrives and informs him that Léon killed Malky, one of the corrupt DEA agents, in Chinatown that morning. The additional material is found in the film's second act, and it depicts more of the interactions and relationship between Léon and Mathilda, as well as explicitly demonstrating how Mathilda accompanies Léon on several of his hits as "a full co-conspirator", to further her training as a contract killer. On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an approval rating of 74% based on 66 reviews, with an average rating of 6.

Whether you’re rewatching the movie for the hundredth time or checking Leon out with fresh eyes, the film is a classic that still holds up just as a well in 2019 as it did back in 1994. That Leon actually notices her where her family does not creates a connection, and when Leon is the only one left to turn to, it’s almost inevitable that connection turns to affection, her first crush. Mathilda's abusive father attracts the ire of corrupt DEA agents, who have been paying him to stash cocaine in his apartment.

Little girls with guns is a oft-repeated trope in anime, and in the years since Leon came out, I have seen shows like Gunslinger Girl, and Phantom Requiem for the Phantom, which I now realise cribbed liberally from Leon when it comes to imagery and character. The surround track is vibrant and effective, keeping the dialogue clear throughout, while emphasising the action, making for an immersive presentation. She says "When Luc Besson did Léon, the story of a 13-year-old girl in love with an older man, it was very inspired by us"; Besson met Maïwenn when she was 12 and he was 29, and he officially started dating her when she was 15, the legal age of consent in that country. To celebrate this landmark, Studiocanal has put together a new 4K release of the director’s cut of Leon. There’s a safety in the realisation that Leon is unable to pose any kind of threat to a 12 year old child.