Leon: It's always been so hard.
It is a fairy tale projected in the dark, with invisible scars buried under the light and shadow of colored glass.
It is an elegy in a sad city, celebrating the magnificence of life redemption with the faith of a killer.
It is more like a fable about growth and mutual change, allowing a killer who wants to find his innocence and an ignorant girl who wants to become a killer to find the long-lost love in their hearts. This is the famous French director Luc Besson, the seventh work of his directorial career: The first scene of the film
"Leon the Killer" is the famous aerial shot in the history of the film.
Towering high-rise buildings, highways, city streets and alleys, and then the film has a black shot that leads out the protagonist. Leon, who made a living from Italy to France, is a lonely hired killer. To him, who is 40 years old, the killer just means a profession, just like some people are doctors and some people are teachers. The only difference is that he has no choice, he has to be ruthless, he has to be clean. In just a few short shots, the film depicts Leon unmasked as a killer: buying milk at the grocery store, taking a painful bath in the bathroom, ironing clothes in the room, wearing sunglasses, holding hands every night. Sleeping on the sofa with a pistol. His room is always so simple, without any superfluous things, simple and monotonous, just like the loneliness of his life. The only thing that comforts his soul is the pot of lush silver queen of evergreen. Maybe this pot of evergreen does not represent the survival meaning of a killer, but it symbolizes a kind of unabated innocence hidden in a certain corner of the heart. Lai Ang's life has also become fuller in this green plant.
Matilda, a 12-year-old girl, is Leon's neighbor. She is weak, lonely, stubborn, willful, and has a pair of indifferent eyes on her angelic face. The thin, immature body exudes an irresistible beauty. Matilda's happiest time is to sneak out of her room and sit by the stairs smoking the cigarettes she stole from her father's pocket. It was the smoke that made her unable to open her eyes, and the tragic killing of her family linked 12-year-old Matilda with 40-year-old Leon.
The moment the door opened, Lai Ang welcomed the sun. also chose death. The cold life of the killer has the color of a fairy tale because of a girl's pure love. But the killer's fairy tale ending is bound to be tragic. In order to protect this ray of sunshine in his life, in order to avenge Matilda, in order to save Matilda's life, Lai Ang sacrificed his own life. When dealing with the scene where Lai Ang was shot at the end of the film, the director adopted a slow-moving method. Methods of action and silencing. We see the blood spots that have been slowly expanding with raised eyebrows, but the light that is only a few steps away, Lai Ang can no longer step out.
The film's expression of "love" is hazy and ambiguous. It is neither vigorous nor understated. Its effect is like a drop of water penetrating into cotton yarn, and then slowly spreading in it, the director endows the two protagonists with a mild emotional tone and a French brilliance. So this special emotion between them is as beautiful and charming as a fairy tale, but it is so out of reach.
There are many killers cooler than Leon in the history of movies, but he is the only one who combines simplicity, ruthlessness and warmth. Luc Besson did not use a lot of direct violence. Instead, he always hides Lai Ang in the darkness. That tired figure is full of a real cruelty, a kind of coldness and sadness that completely puts the meaning of life behind the survival. Jean Reno perfectly shaped the killer image of cold outside and hot inside. In the film, Reynolds' portrayal of Leon, an alternative fringe killer full of human fireworks, seems to coincide with his own civilian life style. His delicate descriptions of life fragments are deeply touching, full and full of tension, and the simple silence, simple warmth and trustworthy tough guy temperament of killer Lai Ang can also be found in Reno.
Most of Luc Besson's films are always without the music of the scorer Eric Shana, the music of "Leon the Killer", which mainly uses cold and dark electronic sounds to render the tension of the action, and almost all action scenes are accompanied by Egyptian music. Rick Shana's meticulously composed melody, he also used violin symphony and aria-style chamber music to complete the natural connection between transitions, conveying the charming style of emotional bursts. In addition, the film's theme song "The Shape of My Heart" has a magnetic and slightly sad voice at the end, which uniquely interprets the tragic fate of Ang's loneliness like a singing voice. And Matilda's strength as walking on thin ice seems to be safe only in this singing.
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