Classic Movie

'No women, no children'

	Reno's dyslexic, naive killing machine is the perfect foil for Portman's brash, vengeful victim.

The plot A socially inadequate loner whose best mate is a houseplant reluctantly gives his 12-year-old neighbour refuge after a psychotic federal agent brutally murders her whole family. When the aggrieved girl finds out her saviour is a hitman, she insists on becoming his protege and sets her mind firmly on revenge.

So what happens? Leon's get up do sit-ups, kill somone ("no women, no children"), drink milk and go to sleep in a chair regime is no more. Despite permanently disrupting his shadowy existence ("You saved me, so now you're responsible for me"), Leon begins to train Mathilda in the ways of a "cleaner". Against a typically Besson backdrop of stylish violence and black humour, an awkward, wholly unexpected love story evolves.

Why's it a classc? Despite drinking more milk than a week-old billy goat with a hole in its throat, and wearing the kind of shoes you'd normally associate with a fat army cadet, Leon is the epitome of cool. The "ruthless hitman with the big heart" premise is waftably cheesy but Jean Reno and Natalie Portman (in her best ever performance) lend an utterly believable sheen to what is a preposterous story. Reno's dyslexic, naive killing machine is the perfect foil for Portman's brash, vengeful victim.

Whether the message is that out of utter despair love can still be found, or that you should never mess with a man in short trousers, Leon The Professional is a total masterpiece.

Given that this version has an extra 24 minutes of footage (which go some way to explaining both why Leon is the way he is, and why his relationship with Mathilda develops to a point which offended some perplexed American test audiences) we reckon this extended edit is one of cinema's true must-sees. There's an outrageous performance from Gary Oldman as the bent, pill-popping Fed, Stansfield, another mesmerising score form Eric Serra and direction that oozes more style than Michale Caine being crushed in a vice.

Leon The Professional fuses the best bits of European and American cinema to create one of the most captivating movies of the 90s.