Leon: the Professional stars Jean Reno and Natalie Portman as a pair of assassins.
IMDB describes Leon: The Professional (1994) like so:
“Mathilda, a 12-year-old girl, is reluctantly taken in by Léon, a professional assassin, after her family is murdered.
An unusual relationship forms as she becomes his protégée and learns the assassin’s trade.”
With Luc Besson as the director and Jean Reno as the star, the movie has a definite French feel to it.
Jean Reno (108 credits) – French Kiss (1995), Mission: Impossible (1996), & The Da Vinci Code (2006) – stars with Natalie Portman (65 credits) – I stopped watching anything she’s in after Beautiful Girls (1996).
I have this theory that the part was up for grabs between Natalie Portman, a native of Israel, and Maïwenn (40 credits), a native of France.
Portman was 12 and Maïwenn was 16 when filming started. Maïwenn appears as a call girl listed as Blond Babe, but the rest of her roles were in French movies.
A search of images from the two stars produced these similar poses:
There are two more standouts in the cast:
Gary Oldman (106 credits) – played Lee Harvey Oswald in JFK (1991), True Romance (1993), & Hannibal (2001). By the way, JFK was the last movie I saw in a theater.
Danny Aiello (106 credits – Fort Apache the Bronx (1981), Once Upon a Time in America (1984), & plays Nicholas Cage’s father in Moonstruck (1987).
We do get a little sniff at Hollywood’s fascination with child pedophiles. Portman and Reno live together and there’s sexual tension between them.
Sex-O-Meter Scores (as adults): Maïwenn 5 – Portman 0 – she couldn’t pay me enough.
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