Léon (1994): Hitman Gets Homework
You think you know hitman movies, but Luc Besson made every subsequent assassin flick feel like a community theater understudy. This 1994 French fever dream pairs a milk-obsessed killer with a twelve-year-old seeking vengeance, and somehow it works. The reason why should make you uncomfortable.
Besson walks a tightrope over a canyon of bad taste. Jean Reno's Leon is a gentle giant who waters plants and sleeps sitting up, childlike in his simplicity. Natalie Portman's Mathilda is a chain smoking twelve year old who propositions him. On paper, this sounds like a studio executive's worst nightmare. But here is the thing. The film earns your trust scene by scene. Gary Oldman's unhinged DEA agent provides enough external menace that the relationship becomes sanctuary rather than scandal. Whether that sanctuary stays pure is another question entirely.
What Is It About
The premise promises a simple revenge story. Mathilda's family gets slaughtered by corrupt cops, Leon takes her in, she demands he teach her to kill. Clean transactional setup. Then the complication arrives like a slow poison. This girl does not just want skills. She wants him. Not romantically, not exactly, but with an intensity that defies easy labels. Leon resists, retreats, cleans his rifle obsessively. What happens when an emotionally stunted man and a traumatized child both reach for something neither understands?
Plot Holes and Things That Make No Sense
Okay so Leon is this legendary ghost assassin who has survived decades in the game but he keeps his entire life savings in cash with a hotel manager he barely trusts. My guy has never heard of a bank. Also Stansfield massacres an entire family in broad daylight in a New York apartment building and zero witnesses come forward, no investigation happens, nothing. The NYPD just shrugs apparently. And Mathilda walks into a DEA building armed, gets caught, and Leon extracts her without a single agent pursuing them afterward. Federal agents just let that slide? The plot runs on vibes and Besson's confidence that you are too hypnotized by Reno's sad eyes to notice.
The Good, The Bad, The Honest
The visual language here is genuinely masterful. Besson shoots New York like a European fairy tale, all warm yellows and deep shadows, turning grimy apartments into storybook lairs. Reno communicates more with a slow blink than most actors manage with monologues. Portman at twelve outacts people three times her age. However. The tonal shifts give you whiplash. Oldman's operatic pill popping lunatic belongs in a different film entirely. His scenes play like campy horror while everything else aims for tender melancholy. Besson wants his cake, wants to eat it, wants to smash it in your face too. Sometimes restraint is not cowardice.
Cast and Direction
Besson directs like a man who has never been told no and honestly it shows in the best and worst ways. Reno deserved an Oscar nomination but the Academy was too busy pretending Forrest Gump was profound. Portman is terrifyingly assured. Oldman however chews scenery like he skipped breakfast, lunch and several medications.
How It Ends
Leon storms the DEA building to rescue Mathilda, gets cornered, and takes enough bullets to kill three men. He hands Stansfield a grenade pin, whispers "this is from Mathilda," and blows them both into oblivion. Mathilda survives. She plants Leon's beloved houseplant in the garden of her new school, giving it roots at last. The ending lands because Besson spends two hours establishing Leon as a man who has never lived for anything. Dying for someone finally gives him purpose. It is manipulative as hell but the film earns every tear it wrings from you. Cheap it is not.
The Verdict
The single best thing this film does is make you root for a relationship that should repulse you. Final verdict: a flawed masterpiece that trusts its audience more than most directors dare. Skip it and you miss one of the few action films that could genuinely break your heart between gunfights. Your streaming queue is full of worse decisions waiting to happen.
Is Léon (1994) worth watching?
Absolutely
Léon (1994) scores 8.6 out of 10 on SpoilSins, and the one-line verdict is "Absolutely". Above the SpoilSins median of 7.5, and higher than 90% of the 115 films scored here.
8.6/10 the SpoilSins score
- Released
- 1994
- Genre
- Action-Adventure, Drama
- Reviewed by
- Broikos Nikos,
- Scale
- Out of 10, and what that means, against every score on SpoilSins
