Review - 'Team America: World Police'

When I saw this film for the first time in May of 2005, I came out of the theater with a 6-pack. No, not a case of beer, I mean my abs were ripped! Why? ....because I laughed non-stop for an hour in a half, and all those crunches gave me the ultimate ab workout! Tears were streaming down my face for most of it and I was flexing those stomach muscles so much from the hilarity that I was sore for days.

Geniuses of satire Matt Stone and Trey Parker bring more laughs to the big screen after their wildly funny 1999 movie "South Park: Bigger Longer and Uncut" with a cast of square-jawed marionettes fighting terror by way of North Korea's Kim Jong II in a relevantly childish reading of "freedom." Inspired by the '60s British television series "Thunderbirds," Stone and Parker use Jerry Bruckheimer's action movie plot template to parody America's bullying military with one-third-scale puppets that give new meaning to 'wooden acting.'

The ridicule hits a fever pitch anytime the comic duo's brilliantly phrased songs modify the puppet action sequences (you'll be chanting "Team America, F**k Yeah" for days). Kim Jong II exploits the Film Actors Guild (including Alec Baldwin, Tim Robbins, Samuel Jackson and Sean Penn) for his evil schemes while the Team America World Police recruit a Broadway actor to infiltrate an Iraqi terror cell. This all-out adult satire pulls no punches and takes no prisoners.

The greatest gift that Matt Stone and Trey Parker possess is their inexhaustibly childish and brash approach to big issues. Although they’ve said in interviews that "Team America: World Police" mocks terrorists rather than the war on terror, the film rightfully does off-handedly ridicule Bush’s "war on terror." The movie slyly acknowledges the truth of multinational global corporate oppression, that there is no and can be no such thing as a war on terror, just as there can be no war on the desperation that drives ostracized people from committing any act of abysmal depression. When our puppet commandos kick off "Team America" by killing a group of Muslim terrorists in Paris, they consequently destroy the Louvre and kill many French civilians. It’s no accident that the French are the first to suffer at the hand of America’s fraternity minded group of mercenary heroes with ammo belts hung across their chests to preclude any confusion about the heroes’ agenda.

The liberal doses of crude vulgarity that Stone and Parker smear over everything they do is a keen equalizer that goes much deeper than party lines or class striations. Stone and Parker’s purely filthy satire enters your central nervous system via coded systems of pop culture references that expand in your sub conscious as you watch the movie. It’s a thoroughly integrated and sophisticated brand of intoxicating anti-propaganda that sparks from everything you already know on an intrinsic level.

In "Team America" no quarter is given to corporate shills like George Bush or John Kerry, or to puppet enemies like Osama or Hussein. Instead the filmmakers go right for the jugular of North Korea’s Kim Jong Il as a lonely dictator baddie who feeds UN Weapons Inspector Hans Blix to a shark. That scene won’t stick in your memory as much as the much-debated hilarious puppet sex scene (with an extended and extra disgusting version on the DVD), and the film’s final explanation of the world’s problems as based on assholes, pussies, and dicks, surely will stick with you.

Here's the mind-meltingly hilarious soundtrack for you to listen to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhQ5678cJU8&list=PLF89A1F4F409E4F7D

Rated R. 98 mins. (A+) (Five Stars)

Here's some behind-the-scene clips...

The Final Shot - A Farewell to Boardwalk Empire

It's been 16 months since the series Boardwalk Empire took it's final bow, and I still miss the show deeply. It will always hold a special place in my heart and will always be in my top ten best shows of all time.

This series may not have gained the popular acclaim of Breaking Bad or The Sopranos but it is one of the most exceptional, multi-layered television dramas of the past 25 years.
After five seasons, the 56th and final episode was aired here in Canada on October 26th, 2014, and the dramatic and sombre finale tied together events with a bittersweet touch.



The story is set in the 1920s' America, after the Great War when any man can live a lavish life for a few dollars, legally or illegally. A county political figure, Enoch gains prominence and takes control of the famous Atlantic City during the Prohibition period when the Wall Street sees a boom, women get the right to vote, radio makes its way into the market in the changing times.



The central figure of the drama was Enoch 'Nucky' Thompson (based on Atlantic City criminal Enoch L Johnson), who has been played with such subtlety by Steve Buscemi. By gambling on Buscemi, series creator Terence Winter – one of the men behind The Sopranos – and executive producer Martin Scorsese showed that they were casting an anti-hero who relied on guile and emotion. Buscemi has incredibly sad eyes, and he put them to fine use as he looked back, throughout season five, on his damaged childhood.

Boardwalk Empire has always been something of a mystery in the crowd of paid-cable prestige dramas. Its creative and production pedigree was unparalleled when it premiered nearly 6 years ago, with a Martin Scorsese-helmed pilot that carried a $4 million budget and was studded with movie talent. It’s never suffered from a particularly large viewership, perhaps because the slow-burn pacing and occasional unevenness of some of the many meandering subplots kept Boardwalk from becoming the compulsively watchable hit HBO must have hoped for. But it’s remained a show incredibly rich in details, both aesthetic and narrative.

Its returning stable of directors (familiar enough that it’s fitting Tim Van Patten turned the lights off) offered a distinctly cinematic aesthetic, and the ensemble of writers (including Winter, Howard Korder, Steve Kornacki, and Christine Chambers) handled a daunting ensemble, who from the leads to the day players were one of the most impeccable casts on TV.

[ Spoilers Ahead ]
The finale started with a stark image. The iconic opening-credits sequence, in which a dapper Nucky strode into the surf fully dressed, was missing. Instead, our protagonist was stripped bare as he went for an early morning swim. But his sins would not be washed clean. We knew his downfall was coming and we knew he deserved it. We were shown how he sold his soul for a piece of silver (in the form of a sheriff's badge) after talking a young, impressionable teenage girl into becoming the sex slave of a paedophile.



By giving Gillian Darmody (Gretchen Mol) to the Commodore, he sent himself and her into a downward spiral that would destroy both their lives. Nucky had one final chance to made amends to Gillian, by rescuing her from an insane asylum. He made a point of telling her this would not happen. In the end, it wasn't a gangster that did for Nucky, it was Gillian's grandson, Tommy Darmody.
The moral messages about greed ran thick through Boardwalk Empire (the finale was called Eldorado) and it was no coincidence that Nucky was killed after he proved incapable of giving genuine sympathy to the young Tommy (whom he believed to be a 'hick' called Joel Harper), attempting to buy him off rather than help him.



The younger Nucky was played well by Marc Pickering, who imitated Buscemi's facial ticks and voice well in the flashback scenes, but it was Buscemi who had the most telling scene. Just when it seemd an escape was possible, when he had made $2million through a stock market scam, he danced to the Bing Crosby song It Must be True with his estranged wife Margaret (Kelly Macdonald). It was a moving moment, the two of them flirting with the idea of rebuilding a future together, but it was not to be. There seemed little doubt that Nucky would have to pay for his sins (the real life Nucky died in 1968, aged 85, at a convalescent home in New Jersey) but it was a nice touch that when the bullets finally came, they included one right below the eye, where Nucky had shot Tommy's father.
The deaths came thick and fast in the final season, as key characters – including Michael Shannon's Nelson Van Alden and the superb Michael Kenneth Williams's Albert 'Chalky' White – were killed off. In the finale, Dr Valentin Narcisse (Jeffrey Wright) was also slaughtered in the middle of another hypocritical religious talk. Only Nucky's brother Eli ostensibly escaped, with a bag of money, a shaving kit and a memory stocked with brutal violence.



One of the triumphs of the series, and especially the final season, was This is England's Combo, Stephen Graham, as Al Capone. Graham was personally picked by Scorsese to play the role. His Brooklyn accent has been good and he brought something different to the tricky task of playing a mobster everyone knows from previous portrayals by Robert de Niro, Ben Gazzara and Rod Steiger. Graham showed the menacing and volatile Capone but also softened the character with humour. There was a fine scene in which Capone kept re-watching newsreel footage of himself, laughing manically while surrounded by his scared and fawning crew.



Buscemi and Graham both have in common the capacity to make you feel sympathy for such disgusting and amoral characters. In Capone's case, it was particularly in the way he loved his deaf son, Sonny. When Capone told his son he was going to jail, he said: “Be a good boy. Remember all I did was for you." The boy did a "put up your dukes" signal with his hands, asking for a hug. It was a painful and moving scene, especially if you know that in real life the boy lived on until 2004, changing his name to hide the family shame. Graham must surely be in line for an award for this season's performance.



'Eldorado' (the title for the final episode) was co-written by series creator Howard Korder and Terence Winter (who are the show runners on HBO's new series 'Vinyl' -- set in 1973's world of the rock 'n' roll music industry in), and directed by HBO veteran Tim Van Patten. How they oozed class. But what made the series such a success overall was that it was so intricate. It was always about more than just Prohibition and crime, and explored interesting areas such as politics, the war, women's rights and race relations in Twenties and Thirties America. But probably most important of all Boardwalk Empire proved beyond doubt that Buscemi is one of the modern greats of acting, this series will be Buscemi's ever-lasting legacy.

[ End of Spoilers ]

It wasn’t always a smooth road; many of the series’ women petered out after strong introductions, sidelined or ground under the story wheels, and this season in particular has often felt as if loose threads were getting caught in the breeze thanks to a time jump, a shortened season order, and the flashbacks that never quite paid their rent. But perhaps it’s best to leave a show with things left unsaid. The grief of life is inevitable; some of it can wait.

In its characterization and dialogue, in its shots of the lonely shore or a smoky nightclub, in the moments of dry humor or unexpected tenderness, Boardwalk Empire was an often-fascinating portrait of an age. It came and went quietly, but at its best, it told one hell of a story.

But overall it's an amazing show, if you're a lover of film, if you like period pieces and amazing character-acting, you'll fall in love with this masterpiece and you'll appreciate this series for its dedication and commitment. I highly recommend it to anyone (though it does have harsh language and some brutal violence at times). I just stumbled upon this HBO special, if you haven't seen the series at all, I guarantee you won't be disappointed, but this video does have SPOILERS:



See my study on the cinematography of Boardwalk Empire here.

Her

It’d be easy to describe Spike Jonze’s new film, Her, in snarky or silly fashion: “Well, it’s about a lonely schlub who falls madly in love with a virtual woman.” If you immediately think of that obscure 1984 movie called Electric Dreams (or get visions of Philip J. Fry smooching a virtual Lucy Liu), then you’re the sort of sci-fi geek I respect — but let’s get all ideas of novelty and “gimmickry” out of the way right now. Yes, the fascinating and frequently sublime Her is about a man who falls in love with an artificial intelligence inside a computer's operating system, but once you get past the film’s simplest ideas, it quickly blossoms into a weird, warm, and very satisfying statement about the nature of love; how it works, why we need it, and most importantly, what it does to us.

Spike Jonze tends to makes strange films, and that's why I've always liked him. Whether they’re brilliant or absurd is up to the individual viewer, but after features like Being John Malkovich, Adaptation., and Where the Wild Things Are, it becomes hard to ignore, and harder to not like this refreshingly “anti-formula” filmmaker.  I doubt I’ll ever get tired of discovering and rediscovering his movies. And this new one is simply excellent, it raises a host of questions about how we interact with technology and each other, Her is an elegantly constructed piece that seamlessly interweaves drama, design and dialogue.

Supported by one of the most open, honest, and oddly satisfying screenplays in perhaps a decade, at its core, Her is, indeed, about a nice anonymous nobody called Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) who purchases a super-advanced computer operating system that is powered by a self-aware — and perpetually evolving — operating system with a female voice. (Theodore is no idiot; he chooses the voice that sounds like Scarlett Johansson.) And then Theodore gradually proceeds to fall madly in love with “Samantha.”


In the hands of less inspired writer/directors, a concept like this would hit the screen like Short Circuit, the aforementioned Electric Dreams, or any other sci-fi film in which a man falls in love with a robot, and vice versa. But it’s that reversal — that the “virtual” woman also falls madly in love with a human being — that gives Her such a strange poignancy and off-kilter charm. Buried not too deep beneath a sci-fi / rom-com concept is a wonderfully insightful story about how love begins, how it blossoms, and how it manages to blow itself out. Making “Samantha” a non-corporeal “concept” of a woman is a brilliant conceit. Theodore doesn’t want to create a perfect woman, but technology has allowed him to create a woman who is perfect for him. Suffice to say that romantics of both genders will find much to appreciate in Jonze’s poetically meloncholic, low-key, endlessly fascinating screenplay.



Her is also a non-stop buffet of delights for film fanatics; Joaquin Phoenix is simply brilliant as he goes from slightly off-putting to entirely lovable over the course of the film; Ms. Johansson brings an essential sense of warmth and vibrancy to “Samantha” while using only her voice; the supporting cast does its job remarkably well (particularly Amy Adams, Rooney Mara, and Olivia Wilde); and the “feel” of the film is that of slightly advanced sci-fi mixed with a sardonic tone that never goes for the mean joke or obvious answer.
 
I could dedicate additional paragraphs to Owen Pallett’s score or the quietly dazzling cinematography of Hoyte van Hoytema (who's work I first notice in the striking visuals of Let The Right One In), and I could note how unexpectedly funny and quietly honest this film is, or comment on how Jonze seems to get more confident and accomplished with each successive film, but I think the point is clear...

Her is a very smart, philosophical, and touching movie, and I feel like I’m a slightly better person for having seen it. Not sure you can give a film a nicer compliment than that.

Run Lola Run

It begins with a frantic phone call that acts as the starting pistol in a race against the clock. Lola is player one in the video game like premise of Run Lola Run. She’s got twenty minutes to help her boyfriend Manni, a small time crook replace 100,000 German marks of his boss’ money. Her love for Manni is pertinent as she runs determined through the streets of Berlin in a pair of Doc Martens (ouch), her woodpecker red hair catching the breeze as she flies by everyone. And though she fails the first time around like Sonic the Hedgehog or Mario she gets another life and the game resets. Not once, but three times. Lola is clever enough to take what she learns from each run into the next round. Director Tom Tykwer uses very specific stylistic choices: frenetic editing, the mixing of animation and live action, split screen, nods to Vertigo, Bonnie and Clyde and Breathless and a new approach to the three act film.

I've seen it twice now, and there's something about it that has me drawn to it, it's not a perfect film, but its just different enough to keep you well grounded in your seat - waiting to see what's going to happen. My short animated film The Chase was partially inspired by this film, I enjoy showing Run Lola Run to my animation students, especially since none of them have ever heard of it before.

Drive - Review

Truth be told, I’ve been growing pretty restless over new movies. It’s hard to get turned on by yet another prequel, sequel, reboot or remake (Straw Dogs, Total Recall, Pirates of the Caribbean 5, National Treasure 3, I-Robot 2  really? seriously?). It's all the endless supply of loud brassy unoriginal action made up of slicing and dicing old films and redoing them in 3-D.

Then came Drive, one of the coolest and most exciting movies that I’ve seen in a very long time. Drive’s strength lies in the fact that that it so different than any canned films made today. My friend described it perfectly as “new and true” because “They just don’t make movies like this right now!”...Lately, Hollywood seems void of new ideas, a recycling plant for known money-makers and empty celebrity driven features that will just break even.

Drive is a risk - a slow starter who’s second act comes like a swift punch in the gut, leaving you reeling and as confused as ever. The action and violence that’s alluded to in it’s trailer and posters that warn “There are no clean getaways” are only a preview of what’s to come. I should have known when the beat dropped for Kavinsky’s Nightcall that this was gonna be something different. But it’s better that I keep the details to a minimum and you’ll be thankful for my vagueness later.  

Drive is a perfect movie, mainly for the fact that when the movie does kick into gear it feels as if you’re watching a different film, which may turn off lots of people. But for me, it somehow works, thanks to its protagonist simply called Driver, played by Ryan Gosling. By the way, check Jim White's hot pink movie poster tribute he made, so awesome.

This film is captivating on several levels, I couldn't keep my eyes off of it, it's unpredictable, it doesn't hold back, and it's just plain COOL. It's rounded out by beautiful cinematography, a fantastic score, bold costume choices and strong performances by Bryan Cranston, Ron Perlman, and Carey Mulligan.

Not to mention the pace of this film is a beautiful thing to behold. This is no antic-frantic affair; instead, it's a cerebral game of stop-and-go, hide-and-seek, as the director behind the camera handles things exactly like the guy behind the wheel - with a stylish mixture of cold calculation and cool aplomb. There's not a single hand-held camera shot in the whole movie. It's a film that has its finger on the pulse of what's current and in style, and one that has solidified its place as the coolest film of 2011.

Breaking Bad - Review

This incredible series is about a family man, Walter White (Bryan Cranston), a high school chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. Walter realizes that when he dies, he'll leave his pregnant wife, Sklyer (Anna Gunn), and teenage son, Walter, Jr. with nothing. So he decides to use his training to become a chemical millionaire - by becoming the best maker of meth in all of New Mexico.

Sounds like a simple enough premise right? Through a series of events, he hooks up with Jesse Pinkman, one of his former students, now a slacker and a no-goodnik who has made good as a meth dealer. The results are the basis of phenomenal storytelling and compelling character arcs the likes of which I haven't seen since The Sopranos.



The two make an unpredictable team of ill-fitting drug purveyors in a business so dangerous, so miserable and so fraught with unhappy consequences, that you'll be nearly out of your seat.
Add into the mix Skyler's sister, Marie (Betsy Brandt), an X-ray technician, and her husband, a bigoted, boisterous and exceptionally insensitive DEA agent named Hank (Dean Norris). Creating a rolling meth lab out of an RV, Walt and Jesse end up on Day One with the best meth in New Mexico and two dead men.



Gory, ugly, at times funny, at times horrifying, Cranston and Paul are so good, it's astounding. In fact I'd sometimes forget I was watching a TV show, it's shot like a movie and plays out like a movie.

The acting is as good as you'll see on TV. The scripts and plots are as out-there as creator/writer/producer Vince Gilligan's other series, "The X-Files."

I only started watching this show last spring, I had lots of catching up to do since I knew the 4th season had begun on television. I had been avoiding this series, for no particular resin, I had heard nothing bad, in fact I had heard nothing but incredibly good things about it.

I hadn't been so hooked on a series since Sopranos and Deadwood, with uniquely compelling story plotlines, brilliantly executed story arcs, and extremely well developed characters. I highly recommend it in every way, if you love film-making, you'll love this show, it hooks you in and keeps your riveted and entertained through the whole 4 seasons, like a good book, you can't put it down.

Lead actor Bryan Cranston stated in an interview that the term "breaking bad" is a southern colloquialism and it means when someone who has taken a turn off the path of the straight and narrow, when they've gone wrong. And that could be for that day or for a lifetime."

On a side note: Cranston recently voiced the character of Police Officer Gordon in the highly anticipated Batman Year One animated film.




AMC announced the renewal of this highly acclaimed series last August, adding that the 5th season would be its last. Throughout its run, the show has garnered critical and viewer acclaim, and has been instrumental in AMC’s rise in the original programming scene.

Breaking Bad‘s fifth season will consist of 16 episodes – three more than we saw in seasons 2 – 4 (season 1 was only 7 episodes) . The extended order should give the writers some extra room to wrap up the series. The final episodes will begin airing in mid-2012.



Here's some interesting trivia regarding the series:

Characters and their values are represented by the colors they wear. Skyler is usually dressed in blue and Jesse in yellow and red (when he is in recovery, he wears gray). Walter wears green because he is stuck between his family and the drug trade. When the Whites' daughter is born, pink is introduced to the spectrum. Similar color patterns show up during the series. The DEA agents, Hank and Gomez, wear orange, representing police. Marie is usually in purple and many of the other doctors on the show are seen in it as well. And when Jane, the recovering heroin addict, wears black.



The actor who portrays Walter Jr. in the series (RJ Mitte), actually has cerebral palsy like his character on the show.

The title of the series is spelled using the chemical symbols for bromine, Br, and barium, Ba. Chemical symbols from the periodic table of the elements also appear in the opening credits. A letter or letters in someone's name appears capitalized and in a different color.

When characters on the show are smoking meth, they are actually smoking sugar or rock candy but do not inhale.

Bryan Cranston (Walter), Anna Gunn (Skyler) and Bob Odenkirk (Saul Goodman) have guest starred in Seinfeld. Anna played Jerry's girlfriend in "The Glasses" (Season 5). Bryan made his first appearance as Dr. Tim Whatley a year later, in "The Mom and Pop Store" (Season 6). Bob played Ben Galvant in "The Abstinence" (Season 8); Elaine is dating Ben because she thinks he is a doctor; he hasn't passed his exams and his big line is "I'm not really a doctor".



Walter White's alias, Heisenberg, is a tribute to Werner Heisenberg, who formulated the uncertainty principle, which states that it is impossible to determine simultaneously both the position and velocity of an electron or any other particle with any great degree of accuracy or certainty.

In the beginning of each episode, the chemical formula C10H15N along with the number 149.24 and the word "Meth" can be seen just before the title Breaking Bad appears. C10H15N is the formula for methamphetamine, which has the molecular weight of 149.24.

Before working together on Breaking Bad, Vince Gilligan had already cast Bryan Cranston against his usual type in "Drive," an episode of The X Files that Gilligan wrote in which Cranston played a white supremacist with an infection that made his head explode if his car's speed dipped below 50 miles per hour.




On the season one DVD audio commentary, Vince Gilligan revealed that Jessie was originally going to die by the end of season one. However, they changed their minds after seeing Aaron Paul's performance.

Betsy Brandt was pregnant during season two. Whenever she reached the point in the pregnancy that Skyler was supposed to be, the producers would do pick-up shots with her as the fake bare belly on Anna Gunn clearly looked fake.

During filming, the introduction of Wendy the prostitute was briefly interrupted when a non-actor attempted to pick up actress Julia Minesci, mistaking her for a prostitute.

Léon: The Professional - Review

Léon: The Professional is a 1994 action-thriller/love-story movie written and directed by French filmmaker Luc Besson. It stars Jean Reno as a mob hitman, Gary Oldman as a corrupt DEA agent, a young Natalie Portman, in her feature film debut, as a 12-year-old girl who is taken in by the hitman after her family is murdered.

It's easy to forget 17 years later this was a rather controversial movie, particularly the European cut, simply known as Leon. In fact, the European version was so risque for American test screen audiences the movie's questionable scenes were removed and the film was retitled, The Professional. The European version is clearly the better film specifically because it takes those risks. I only got to see these deleted scenes a couple years ago, and this extended/international version is what I'm reviewing here.



There's an undercurrent in this movie that is designed to make you feel a little uncomfortable and that's what separates it from the pack. Consider the elements: A 12-year-old girl's family, including her three-year-old younger brother are massacred. A hitman (or "cleaner" as he prefers) takes her in. She then enlists his help to teach her how to "clean" so that one day she too could master the art of scrubbing. He teaches her to kill, she teaches him to read and write. They play. He uses an oven mitt with a cartoon pig on it to get her to stop crying about losing her family to murder. Things get kinkier.



She dresses like Madonna, Marilyn Monroe, Charlie Chaplin and Gene Kelly. He dresses like John Wayne. She gets drunk at dinner. She tells him she loves him. She can feel it in the pit of her stomach, she says. It hurts. They practice killing more. At one point he confesses he may not be the best lover in the world. Because, you know, Leon isn't the most mentally mature person in the world. There is always the speck of doubt as to what he might be willing to do. This movie feels dangerous and not just because of the bullets. No matter how many times she professes her love for him, he stays... professional. He treats her like an adopted daughter, and he acts like a father to her.



Reno's performance is a kind of beautiful. Child like, maybe slightly mentally-challenged but undeniably an efficient killer and a protective father figure. He walks as if always in a rush to be somewhere though it seems for the most part, he has very little to do with his time. He looks like an immigrant and fits in perfectly in a city filled with them. He isn't so much a film buff as he is a fan of Gene Kelly movies. His "best friend" is a potted plant which he cares for diligently.



He is a killer of hundreds but he has an undeniable innocence about him. He sits before Danny Aiello like a slightly guilty son or an indentured servant eternally grateful for whatever favor Aiello granted him years ago (he shyly inquires about money rightfully owed to him and Aiello is "holding"). That's the other thing about Leon: you genuinely feel like you're dropping into a fleshed-out world. There is definitely a whole slew of Leon stories before he met Mathilda just as I'm sure there are a slew of Mathilda stories to be had in the years following the film.

Portman, meanwhile, was a revelation at the time. Creepy crushes across America developed from the geeks to the greasers. Part of it was the old soul, with a femme fatale edge. I remember seeing a publicity picture of Portman holding a gun in one hand and a stuffed bunny in the other. Picking up on this vibe perhaps, she was perfectly cast two years later in the Ted Demme movie, Beautiful Girls where even the much older Timothy Hutton fell for her a little.





Then there's Gary Oldman's performance. It's over the top and exaggerated in no uncertain terms, but I find it fits well in the style the film is developed in. Most critics didn't like it, and I'll admit, it makes no sense as to why he seems to be totally immune from consequences for killing anyone he wants, but it's an interesting portrayal none the less.



This frankness, this honesty breathes through The Professional. Even if the world the characters live in are quite unrealistic, the relationships are not. You may not like how it makes you think or feel or worry about, but it's one action film that isn't about to bullshit you either.






The film received generally favorable reviews from critics. As of January 2011, the film holds a "Certified Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with an aggregate rating of 78% based on 40 critical reviews, and the consensus, "Pivoting on the unusual relationship between seasoned hitman and his 12-year-old apprentice — a breakout turn by young Natalie Portman — Luc Besson's Léon is a stylish and oddly affecting thriller". I believe the young age of the Mathilda character, and Gary Oldman's deliberately overstated portrayal of corrupt DEA officer Norman Stansfield, really divided critics' opinions.





At a modest budget of $16 million, Léon is to some extent an expansion of an idea in Besson's earlier 1990 film, La Femme Nikita. It is still a very entertaining film, not dated, visually stylish as it is graphically violent, and that's exactly what makes The Professional so fascinating. Reno (a longtime Besson collaborator with a compelling, Stallone-like face and previous experience playing a hit man in Nikita) may be working with New York natives like veteran actor Aiello and young Portman, but under Besson's tutelage, the French actor managed the cool trick of making Aiello act less New Yorkish than ever. And Portman — gravely beautiful and self-confident, with her dark hair shingled in the kind of Louise Brooks bob making the Mathilda character into an extraordinary child.

It is stylish, darkly humorous, and almost artsy in its approach to the genre. It still remains one of my personal favorites, I highly recommend it.