{"id":30261,"date":"2026-07-22T21:26:42","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T20:26:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=30261"},"modified":"2026-07-22T21:26:42","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T20:26:42","slug":"a-review-of-the-superb-1994-film-leon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=30261","title":{"rendered":"A review of the superb 1994 film \u201cLeon\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Following the success of \u201cNikita\u201d, the French Luc Besson made this superb and stylish action-thriller in the English language as both writer and director.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Set in New York City, it brings together the eponymous Italian-American \u2018cleaner\u2019 aka hitman (Jean Reno who played a similar character in \u201cNikita\u201d), a grizzled, brilliantly efficient operator who loves milk and his plant, and 12 year old abused American girl next door Mathilda (a remarkably assured Natalie Portman in her feature film debut), who comes to owe her life to him and wants to emulate him. Leon works for local gangster Tony (Danny Aiello) and he and Matilda are pursued by a corrupt, bloodthirsty, drug-fuelled DEA agent (Gary Oldman).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The film opens with an exciting display of Leon\u2019s professional talents and ends with him taking on a whole battalion of heavily-armed SWAT police. Along the way, Leon and Matilda develop a kind of romance, not overtly sexual but deep and moving, each giving the other a new purpose in life. This is one of my favourite movies.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Following the success of \u201cNikita\u201d, the French Luc Besson made this superb and stylish action-thriller in the English language as both writer and director.&nbsp; Set in New York City, it brings together the eponymous Italian-American \u2018cleaner\u2019 aka hitman (Jean Reno who played a similar character in \u201cNikita\u201d), a grizzled, brilliantly efficient operator who loves milk [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30261"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30262,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30261\/revisions\/30262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}