Léon: Not In that Way

Alphonso
Dec 16, 2021
4 min read

“The right choice is hardly ever the easy choice."

― Rick Riordan, The Throne of Fire

Léon is one of my favorite movies. Other than its amazing cinematography, directing, and of course the acting, I like Léon because it includes tens of things such as love, death, and friendship. It also has different scenes like action scenes or love scenes. But there are probably hundreds of movies with the same themes. However, there is one thing that makes Léon more special. It has these different themes and scenes but not in that way. What do I mean? All the answers are in this review.

Léon

Léon has all the features that a good movie needs to have: A good screenplay, good directing, good acting, cinematography, music, good editing... It is an adventurous and exciting movie, you never get bored. In addition to all of these features, the harmony of these features is also great. Director Luc Besson uses all of these features to create Léon which is surely a masterpiece.

Although all the features a movie should have such as directing, acting and screenplay are all perfect in the movie, what I like about Léon is the characters in the movie. Like the harmony of features of the film, characters also have harmony and there is a balance between characters in the movie. A girl who wants to be an adult, an assassin who tries to listen to his inner child. While Mathilda wants to be an assassin like Léon, Léon wants to be free like Mathilda. Jean Reno also said that he wanted to play a man-child. And he played that man-child perfectly. Also, Natalie Portman was the perfect choice for the Mathilda role. Luc Besson wanted Mathilda to be exactly the same as the Mathilda character he imagined in his mind. He talked with nearly 2,000 young actresses including other famous actresses such as Liv Tyler. However, the casting director of the movie didn't want Natalie Portman to play the role as he thought, she was too young to play a girl who acts like an adult. But, when Natalie Portman auditioned again for another scene, they understood that she was the right choice for Mathilda.

Although all the amazing actors in the movie, my favorite actor in the movie is Gary Oldman. Creating the main role with a message is hard, however, creating a side-role with a message is the real success. Generally, we see the past of the main character, we understand the main characters' personality through scenes, we emphasize with them, and we learn everything we need to know at the end of the movie. But, what about the side characters? They are just helping the main story. However, if you achieve to make one of the side characters meaningful, that's one of the hardest things to do in a movie. But, when we look at Gary Oldman's character we see an antagonist who has a deep message.

With all of these great features including all the characters with a message to give in the movie, Léon is definitely a masterpiece.

Léon: Not In That Way

After a general look at the movie, we are coming to the main part of this writing. And this is the part that makes Léon more than a great movie. The reason Léon is a masterpiece is that it hasn't chosen the easy choice. Have you ever noticed that you are watching the same love story, same action scenes, same ending, same characters, and hearing the same dialogues in different movies? The reason for this situation is that none of the production companies want to risk something, they just want easy money, so they use always the same storylines. However, Léon colored outside the lines and Kuc Besson created a unique movie.

Action Not In That Way

When we look at the newly released action movies such as John Wick which is also about an assassin. Most of these action movies have action, action, action, and of course more action. This action bombardment can be entertaining at some times, but these movies can't be masterpieces like Léon. In Léon, we never see and super epic action scene with tons of explosions, rockets, jet fighters, and collapsing buildings, the epicness of the action scenes is made with emotions that characters feel in these action scenes. However, the emotions in the movie are also not the classic emotions that we see in movies.

Emotions Not In That Way

First of all, if you watch an emotional movie, you are probably watching a love story probably between two perfect people. However, in Léon it isn't like this. Emotions are realistic. Characters just have normal emotions, their feelings are not exaggerated, because this is the normal form of emotion we feel in our lives. Characters don't have 1 feeling at one time, they are feeling different things at the same time. And this is the most important part that makes the movie even more realistic than the real-life itself.

Although there are many emotions in the movie, the main theme is love, but this love is also not in a classic way, because actually there isn't love in the movie. This might not make sense, but we never see a full love story, characters have hidden emotions to each other, however, they never express their emotions properly and this creates emotional suspense in the movie. You never know which character loves or hates another character and this way the end of the movie becomes so epic as we don't know that how many things can Léon sacrifice for Mathilda.

Besides being a unique movie that is surely a masterpiece, Léon is also a movie that the modern movie industry should try to understand and learn something from the movie. This movie shows that making a movie doesn't have rules and trying to add rules just limits writers' and directors' creativity. As a timeless movie, Léon is one of our favorite movies and it is one of the pearls of the modern movie industry.

If you liked how Luc Besson's unique style, here are other pearls of the modern movie industry