THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, November 22, 1994 TAG: 9411220064
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E9 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Movie Review
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, MOVIE CRITIC
LENGTH: Medium: 77 lines
"The Professional" is a stunningly hypnotic film that plays violence as if it were classical, poetic. It is not subtle. French director Luc Besson, who scored earlier with the equally violent but less stylish ``La Femme Nikita,'' has pulled out all the stops, and heavy ammunition, to make his first American film as loud as it is overwhelming.
Action fans won't have a chance to take many deep breaths. Gentle folk may be repulsed but awed.
The central characters are Leon and Mathilda. He is a burly loner - a man who has never had a reason to care about anyone. He lives with a plant, the only thing he likes, ``because it doesn't talk back and it's pretty rootless.'' He is also the top hit man in New York - a man who never fails with a gun. He gets top price and he kills cooly, with no remorse. He never kills women or children, though. He also likes Gene Kelly movies, especially ``Singing in the Rain.''
Mathilda is a 12-year-old who lives a miserable life down the hall. Her abusive father leaves her with bruises. Her stepsister is badgering, and her mother is a weak bimbo. The only person she cares about is her little brother. When her father makes a mistake in a drug deal, he's marked for death by a corrupt cop, played by Gary Oldman.
Mathilda's entire family is slaughtered. She seeks help from Leon. ``Cool,'' she comments when he teaches her how to hold a machine gun. Her idols are in teams - Bonnie and Clyde and Thelma and Louise.
The two bond, as father and daughter, with persistent hints of perhaps more perverse sexual bents.
Besson's direction of his own script may be constantly over the top, but there's no denying that it's quite a show. The dark, intrusive style is that of a spaghetti Western, complete with close-ups and whispered lines. The film has such a European look that you half expect subtitles to flash across the screen at any moment. It was, however, filmed in New York City (with interiors done in a Paris studio).
Jean Reno makes Leon into a memorable and quite sympathetic screen persona. Reno, a favorite Besson actor, never wastes a word or a gesture. He is in marked contrast to the overacting of Oldman.
Holding the film together, though, is young Natalie Portman, who has a surprising amount of believable toughness to go with her vulnerability in the role of Mathilda. A lesser presence might have made this an overly sweet duo. As it is, Reno and Portman make a formidable, and curiously compassionate, team of odd killers.
Danny Aiello hisses and snarls as a Little Italy power broker.
Pervading it all is a thundering, thumping percussion score composed by Eric Serra. It's the strangest movie music this year and perhaps the most interesting. At times, it sounds like a sweet, modern symphony.
``The Professional'' is obviously shaped by a European's strangely misguided views of what America is like - a view influenced by American movies. At the same time, it is a sweet, if bloody, folk tale about the little girl who goes into the forest and discovers a beast who can help her.
You should be warned about the violence, but if you can take it, this is one of the more stylish pieces of filmmaking in quite awhile. It's one tough movie. ILLUSTRATION: Photo by PATRICK CAMBOULIVE
Jean Reno and Natalie Portman star as a hitman and a girl drawn
together in ``The Professional.''
MOVIE REVIEW
``The Professional''
Cast: Jean Reno, Gary Oldman, Natalie Portman, Danny Aiello
Director and Screenplay: Luc Besson
MPAA rating: R (graphic violence, language)
Mal's rating: four and 1/2 stars
Locations: Circle 6 and Main Gate in Norfolk; Kemps River and
Lynnhaven Mall in Virginia Beach
by CNB