Well, I was thinking about what should I write first after getting my new ID, so I opted for this wonderful movie, "Leon: The Professional" Directed by Luc Besson and released in 1994, a wonderful movie about a bad guy and about an innocent love, wonderfully acted by two brilliant actors. Sounds familier? Well, just go through the plot and then name me the movie you think is copied from this one.
The Plot is something like this - There’s an innocent hitman named Leon (Jean Reno), who is a "cleaner", and he just goes by the rule, and didn’t have any feelings or expressions of thoughts. If he’s paid, the job’s done, and since he’s not good at managing money, he used to put it in safety under Tony (Danny Aiello), who is also mafia boss and who generally give work to Leon about shooting sombody. Leon didn’t have any distraction in life, and never get distracted anytime, also behaves like retarded, drinking milk, and killing the person he’s paid for. But then enters a girl aged 12 in his life named Mathilda (Natalie Portman), and she started liking this hitman who is of the age of her father. Mathilda’s full family is killed by DEA agents team headed by corrupt "drug addicted" police inspector Norman (Gary Oldman) in a drug raid. And the girl is saved by Leon since Leon is a neighbour of them in the same building. Already Mathilda didn’t liked her family since everybody fights in there and everybody abuses her. Now Leon have to take care of Mathilda, who have innocent liking of him, but will Leon be able to sustain this distraction, a man who always locked his door using many locks, and is not good at interacting people. Even Mathilda wants to become a "cleaner" like him.
Did you guessed which Bollywood movie is copied from this classic movie - Bichhoo (2008) starrer Bobby Deol and Rani Mukherjee. The best part of this movie is the acting, well performed by the great Jean Reno, and the 12-aged Natalie Portman. It was the debut movie of the actress, and she shows the skill of acting here itself as a 12-yr old lover girl. Jean Reno was awesome, looking a bit mentally disturbed-hitman just going by the way he likes. Direction deserves a hand for the wonderfully executed movie, where you find feelings and love in between of fires and action scenes. Simplicity of story-telling is what did the trick, written by Luc Besson himself, and perfect editing by Sylvie Landra, the movie goes slowly and smoothly. Gary Oldman too looked great as corrupt detective (Ashish Vidyarthi of Bichhoo) officer. The climax is nicely shot when Jean tried to escape from the ongoing encounter disguised as a wounded officer, but in the end got shot by Gary. But before dying he handed a pin into Gary’s hand, a loose pin from a grenade, which resulted in explosion killing both of them. May be for many viewers, action may not look suitable, also the young love story didn’t look suitable, although it’s only one-seded affair, as Jean’s character never entertain being as Mathilda’s love interest. Background score is good (Eric Serra), the movie is around 2 hrs long. Some worth mentioning scenes are
Introduction of Leon
Leon’s seeing Mathilda smoking a ciggarette and their introduction
The encounter of Mathilda’s family
The interactions between Mathilda and Leon
The climax part where Leon try to escape the encounter
Mathilda’s finding her way back to the school holding Leon’s preserved plants.
The good intentions, and good execution will always produce a good movie. I watched it long back, but I still have the imprints of it, and I want to watch it again, since not much movies can be called classic. My Rating 5/5.
GRuchirG.
(: in the process of growing-up :)