The film was released in 1994, directed by the famous French director Luc Besson, starring Jean Reno and Natalie Portman. The film is doing great at excellent lens control and deep excavation of people's good and evil. The film has been nominated for the best film of the Japan Film Academy Awards, and seven major nominations for the French Caesar Awards including Best Director, Best Actor, Best Photography, Best Editing, etc. The film tells the story of the professional killer living in New York and the girl next door, Mathilda, who was involved in the dangerous darkness because of an encounter. During this period, the killer revealed the kind and sincere side. The girl Mathilda and the killer gradually succumbed to the suffering, and then to kill the drug trafficking policeman Stan, who killed Mathilda's family. The director has taken a crime-type film with a unique perspective. No matter the characters or plots in the film, they no longer focus solely on murder and gun battles, but on crime mode.
In the framework, the exploration of the human nature and emotions of the killer and the little girl is added. The humanistic feelings and the suspense of crime are organically combined to bring a new theme and impression in the intense stimulation. Luc Besson showed great drama tension in the shaping of the character of killing the hand. In the traditional crime type film, the role as the killer image should be relatively cold and unremarkable, but the director skillfully separated from the gun battle. The film uses a gentle lens to record the pure and warm side of the killer. In the film's construction of the characters, the little girl Mathilda is a mirror of Leon. The director fully casts the humanity of Leon on the little girl Mathilda, making the person of Leon rich and three-dimensional. Leon is a classic killer image that is free from stereotypes in breaking the conventional emotional outburst. At the same time, the sound processing of the film is also a highlight of the film. Director Luc Besson combines the rhythmical clips with the fast or slow music to form an accurate sound and picture alignment. In addition to blindly confusing background sounds, the film reveals the fierceness and bloodiness of the crime scene. Instead, it applies a variety of soft and soothing soundtracks to the killing of the hands, and with the actions and emotions of killing the hands, slowly revealing the softness of his heart. Therefore, the music of the whole film alternates between dynamic and gentle.
It has the exact sound and picture matching of the gun battle, and the Leon and Mathilda are full of classical atmosphere. The effective soundtrack processing of the film is fully mobilized. The auditory feelings of the audience, the care of Mathilda's inner struggle and the care of Leon, through the repeated contrast and set off, created quite touching. During the filming process, the director fully invoked various innovative lens shooting methods to construct a new visual experience. Whether it is the opening of a large depth of field continuous aerial lens or the close-up and switching of the owner's face and body details, the film presents a crime-like texture. The director cooperated with the story, and the combination of multiple shots and close-ups also subtly showed the Matilda's inner destiny and Leon's decisive killing and the tenderness through action aesthetics and actors' close-ups. It is very good to establish a film and television viewing angle unique to the film.
This film fully demonstrates Luc Besson's lens language expressiveness. The director's accurate character shaping and exquisite narrative techniques make the film form an emotional tension under the shell of the crime type, highlighting the the little girl and the killer who are facing the human kindness and innocence in life and death. In the context of assassination and conspiracy, the whole film always controls the rhythm of emotional exposure, making the plot alternately between climax and soothing, greatly enhancing the comfort of the film. The director’s vague attempt to tell us behind the film is that even if the killing is in the dark, the pure nature of the human heart is the cornerstone of our spiritual world. The film is not only valuable in the lens art, but also in the film. The human care and revelation exuded also reminds each of us to be kind to ourselves and to be kind to life. We have to say that this is a classic work that is undoubtedly enough to last forever in history.
My Score is 7.9/10
Movie URL: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/101-l-on?language=en-US
Critic: AAA