Luc Besson
Léon

Can a twelve-year-old girl share something with an Italian-American hitman?

He, survives only on milk, and his only companion is a plant he always carries with him. His job is to kill, with one rule: "no women, no kids."

She, a disenchanted twelve-year-old whose family has been massacred, already wants to learn to kill, or rather "do the cleaning" as she says, to avenge her little brother's death.

The backdrop of this urban fairy tale is the seedy neighborhoods of New York, amid crumbling buildings and squalid yellowish walls where life and death intersect, embrace, and then part ways, where everything is legal and nothing is allowed. The film is not based on a true story, but on many true stories, of kids who find themselves in the same situation as Matilda. A colossal film, yet another demonstration that special effects are not essential to produce a good film. In this film, there's everything: humanity, fragility, compassion, love, cruelty, hatred and, as I mentioned before, life and death. Luc Besson's masterpiece.

The performances are amazing: Jean Reno fits perfectly into the role of the tender-hearted ruthless killer. Natalie Portman, at the time, was a young girl but already had an extraordinary talent, as for the antagonist: Stanfield alias Gary Oldman is the perfect actor to play the corrupt and drugged cop, a member of the American Drug Enforcement department who "loves the quiet before the storm" and Beethoven, one of the greatest actors, in my opinion, of all time. There are also secondary roles such as the Italian-American mafia boss Tony, played by Danny Aiello, who runs an Italian restaurant. But what struck me the most about the film is the innocence of the two characters, wrapped in their own world from which they simply can't extricate themselves, and perhaps they will only succeed in doing so at the end when each will realize that the true job is not to kill but to survive. There are many things I haven't said about the film, and probably others I explained poorly, but the main story I wanted to tell, I have told, and what I had to say on the matter, I have said. I leave you with a beautiful quote from the film which, in my opinion, is the essence of the story: "It is only when you start to fear death truly, that you learn to appreciate life."

P.S. Some initial words and expressions were taken from the back of the DVD cover: they seemed irreplaceable, that they had to be those and no others, which is why I wanted to include them.