Léon, 1994

Léon: The Professional (French: Léon), titled Leon in the UK and Australia (and originally titled The Professional in the US), is a 1994 English-language French action-thriller film written and directed by Luc Besson. It stars Jean Reno and Gary Oldman, and features the film debut of Natalie Portman. The plot follows Léon (Reno), a professional hitman, who reluctantly takes in twelve-year-old Mathilda (Portman) after her family is murdered by corrupt Drug Enforcement Administration agent Norman Stansfield (Oldman). Léon and Mathilda form an unusual relationship, as she becomes his protégée and learns the hitman's trade.

Plot

Léon is an Italian hitman (or "cleaner", as he refers to himself) in New York City's Little Italy working for a mafioso named "Old Tony".

One day, Léon meets Mathilda Lando, a lonely 12-year-old girl. Mathilda lives with her dysfunctional family in an apartment down the hall from Leon, and has stopped attending class at her school for troubled girls. Mathilda's abusive father attracts the ire of corrupt DEA agents, who have been paying him to stash cocaine in his apartment. After they discover he has been stealing the cocaine, DEA agents storm the building, led by their boss, the sharply dressed drug addict Norman Stansfield. During the raid, Stansfield murders Mathilda's family while she is out shopping for groceries. When Mathilda returns, she realizes what has happened just in time to continue down the hall to Léon's apartment; he hesitantly gives her shelter.

Mathilda quickly discovers that Léon is a hitman. She begs him to take care of her and to teach her his skills, as she wants to avenge the murder of her four-year-old brother. At first, Léon is unsettled by her presence and considers murdering her but he eventually trains Mathilda and shows her how to use various weapons. In exchange, she runs his errands, cleans his apartment and teaches him how to read. Mathilda looks up to Léon and quickly develops a crush on him, often telling him she loves him but he does not reciprocate.

When Léon leaves his apartment on an assignment, Mathilda fills a bag with guns from Léon's collection and sets out to kill Stansfield. She bluffs her way into the DEA office by posing as a delivery girl, only to be ambushed by Stansfield in a bathroom; one of his men arrives and informs that Léon killed Malky, one of the corrupt DEA agents, in Chinatown that morning. Léon, after discovering her plan in a note left for him, rescues Mathilda, killing two more of Stansfield's men in the process. An enraged Stansfield confronts Tony, who is tortured for Léon's whereabouts.

That night, Léon tells Mathilda about how he became a cleaner; when Léon was 18 in Italy, he was in love with a girl from a wealthy family. The two made plans to elope but when the girl's father discovered their relationship, he killed her out of anger. Léon killed the father in revenge and fled to New York, where he met Tony and trained to become a cleaner.

Later, while Mathilda returns home from grocery shopping, an NYPD ESU team sent by Stansfield captures her and attempts to infiltrate Léon's apartment. Léon ambushes the ESU team and rescues Mathilda. Léon creates a quick escape for Mathilda by smashing a hole in an air shaft; he tells her to meet him at Tony's place in an hour and tells her that he loves her, moments before the ESU team blow up the apartment. In the chaos, a wounded Léon sneaks out of the building disguised as an ESU officer. He goes unnoticed by everyone except Stansfield, who follows him and shoots him in the back. As Léon dies, he presses a grenade pin in Stansfield's palm, saying that it is from Mathilda. Stansfield opens Léon's vest to find a cluster of grenades, which detonate, killing Stansfield.

Mathilda goes to Tony and tries to convince Tony to hire her but Tony flatly refuses to hire a twelve-year-old and tells Mathilda that Léon told him to give his money to her if anything happened to him. He gives Mathilda $100 as an allowance and sends her back to school, where the headmistress re-admits her after Mathilda reveals what has happened. Mathilda walks onto a field near the school to plant Léon's houseplant, as she had told Léon, to "give it roots".