The Ministry of Film

Léon: The Professional

• Carolina and Robin

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0:00 | 59:07

Carolina and Robin step into the world of the 90s New York Italian mafia (with a side of daddy issues) in Luc Besson's 'Léon: The Professional'.

Politics include: Italians called Fat Tony leading the New York underworld; corrupt cops played by Gary Oldman skimming off the top of said underworld; and a deserved swipe at the Donald Trump types sitting comfortably on top of all that. And a 12-year-old girl learning to become a killer. 

For the first time, we're not just in your ears but also your eyes! Tell us how you like it, and as ever, thank you for bearing with us while we get our heads around this incredibly new technology.

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SPEAKER_00

Hello, I'm Robin. Hello, I'm Carolina. And welcome to the Ministry of Film, a podcast about the art and politics of classic films.

SPEAKER_02

Uh today we'll be talking about Leon the Professional, the 1994 film by Luc Besson. And we are going to be discussing some of our hot takes. I mean, basically, this film can be reduced to two words, which is daddy issues.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, my hot take is basically this is ostensibly an action film, but something that gives us a lot of depth and makes it really interesting is the fact that it really does have the action as sort of secondary to the characters. And this, as you say, theme of father-daughter dynamic.

SPEAKER_02

Yes, with a side of nineties creepiness.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, quite a big side of 90s creepy.

SPEAKER_02

So creepy. I hadn't seen this in so long and it's so wrong. Um also Gary Allman is the best, most attractive psychopath you have ever seen on screen. Even more than Heath Ledger in as the Joker. I I think Heath Ledger as a Joker is nowhere near as good as Gary Allman in this film. There's a sort of like homoerotic, totally scary, psychopathic energy to the guy that genuinely wouldn't work with almost any other actor.

SPEAKER_00

He has a sense of complete evil and psychopathy. I totally agree with that.

SPEAKER_02

Like chaos. He is like a chaos agent, just nothing but corrupt. Very, very satisfying to watch, much more than you would think. Um so yes, I think that those are the two takes, like how to play a psychopath, daddy issues, loads more depth than you would expect in a in a thriller from the 90s. So like really great stuff. Um, Robin, how did this film make you feel? Because I don't know whether you've actually seen this before.

SPEAKER_00

I hadn't seen it before. Uh yeah, I would say I got a bit of an ick from it. It's it's you know, it it treads the line, but the fact of the matter is it's about a 12-year-old girl at least thinking that she has romantic feelings for this thing, if obviously significantly older man. And it's pretty gross, really. It wouldn't get made today, and I think that it's impossible to watch it without thinking that. If we're talking about the good stuff though, I mean I think this is very wonderfully visually directed. So I felt very kind of visually excited by it, I guess.

SPEAKER_02

I was gonna say, like, one of the okay, the feels are sort of like, oh my god, this is great to watch, even though absolutely all over. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um I watched this when I was Natalie Portman's age, and I feel that's significant. Um one because it was a very different time in filmmaking, and two because although the film is like the malest of gays, it also does a really good job of putting you in the place of the little girl, and so it for a long while it was my favourite film ever.

SPEAKER_00

Like enormous praise.

SPEAKER_02

Enormous praise. Like I adored this film, and I had purposely not seen it for a really long time because I kind of knew that watching as an adult would be like uh what the hell. One of the things that is like really tough to say as an adult, as a woman, as a non-woman, whatever, is that like little girls can be like little freaks, but like the idea of being a hitman, I was like, this is so cool. Like the idea of being a hitman, of like living with some like a guy who's teaching you like the ways of the world, like a samurai. I was like, yeah, all in. The other stuff kind of washed over me in that 2000s way where we sort of accepted that these things were like as they were. And obviously, now I look back and I'm like, holy shit, I was so wrong. But yeah, like at the time it just it it really had a very profound effect on me.

SPEAKER_00

So before we get into it more, could you give us a plot summary?

SPEAKER_02

Yes. So it is this film is fundamentally a thriller with a lot of twisty turns, but it's in its conception, like quite simple. You've got our main character, Leon, he is the professional, he is a cleaner, aka a hitman. He works for the Italian mafia in New York City, and uh we meet him literally doing a job where he almost kills a guy and kills everyone else around the guy, just to scare him off a little bit, right? So he does this kind of thing. He drinks milk, he doesn't really have an opinion on who is doing hits on, very profession. Then we see that he comes back home, and in the apartment next to him is this family, uh corrupts Lizzy dad with like three kids. The middle kid is Natalie Pullman, 12-year-old girl. This is relevant because literally in the next scene we see that the family gets slaughtered because of some drug mishap. We think it's some, you know, it is it's some like drug cartel that is that has come and assassinated them, but we discovered pretty early on that they're narcs, they are meant to work in the DEA in the States, but they are corrupt as anything. So we've got our three main kind of characters.

SPEAKER_00

I would say they're barely even obviously DEA agents. I mean, I would just say they're random bad guys. They're just random guys, basically.

SPEAKER_02

They just happen to have an office in the Department of Justice in New York. Um, so we have our three main characters. We've got uh Jean Venot as Leon, we've got Natalie Portman, she's the only one that survives because she's gone to get milk for Leon, comes back, they're literally doing away with the entire family. She as a last resort goes into his house, knocks on the door, and he sort of like rescues her. And that sets up the story, which is a nice premise of what would happen if a hitman suddenly developed a daughter of 12 years of age. What would happen in that in that case, right? Which is actually like a very samurai uh sort of uh trope almost, right? That's sort of like you put a samurai in like a very weird uh situation, and then what develops is he reluctantly trains her, takes her under his wing, um, and her she grows more and more desperate to revenge to avenge her family. So she ends up devising a way of getting into the DOJ in the office. He figures out a way to get her out. By that point, he's killed a couple of cops, like the whole of the DOJ in New York erupts into this whole like we're gonna kill this guy, and so they go and besiege his apartment. Well, the apartment that they've rented to kind of get away from it all. Um, and you have one of the most spectacular like escape scenes, like it's just genuinely incredibly well done. Uh, and a lot of I feel like it's it it's impacted a lot of kind of um uh other films that have come afterwards have been like quite reverential towards it. Um do we spoil it?

SPEAKER_00

Spoiler alerts that's just spoiler alert.

SPEAKER_02

We always spoiler it because we're that way inclined. Uh spoiler alert, he Leon almost makes it, but by that point, Gary Orman, the baddie, has has realized the like what's up, comes chasing after him, and he kills him just about as as he's about to get out of the building. Leon, in his in his wisdom, turns around, unclicks a grenade and blows the two of them up, which is you know fantastic. Uh Matilda tries briefly to work for the Italian mafia. He gets he gets she gets told to like fuck off.

SPEAKER_00

She gets told that, well, no, because you're a 12-year-old girl.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, like what is it? No women, no children, right? So uh so she goes back to the correctionary school for girls that uh his parents had nominally put her in that she was Skyving. So she ends up actually being able to kind of return to some semblance of life, maybe. Um which is kind of like the beginning of Girl Interrupted. So there we go. You could you could line up those two films kind of perfectly together from the end of one to the beginning of the other. Uh but yeah, so that's broadly Leon is shooty shooty action thriller, but actually way smarter than you might imagine.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean what makes it good, as I said, is the fact that it's based around essentially the relationship between these two characters. Yeah. Um so that relationship is very much a substitute father and substitute daughter relationship, but in it, what happens over the course of the film is that Natalie Portman believes at least that she is developing a romantic attachment to Leon now and tells him several times towards the end, I love you. In not as in her father, yeah. Leon spurns her advances.

SPEAKER_02

Thankfully, I I had a moment where I was like, Am I misremembering this? Is it gonna get really funny?

SPEAKER_00

Well I thought the same, yes. I thought, why why on earth uh would we would we want to talk about that? But um I think what they do is basically go a bit too far with that, even though it's an it's a sort of an idea that makes sense, certainly the idea that a 12-year-old who hasn't experienced love in her family home and has experienced horrendous trauma. Has experienced horrendous trauma and would misunderstand or misinterpret familial love for um for romantic love. And I think that they you know, they they do that, but I think that they then just make it kind of icky. I mean it really weakens it because I think there's a lot of potential in this, and it's just like you can't watch it without thinking.

SPEAKER_02

That's it, like we always talk about this. Tone is such a delicate thing.

SPEAKER_00

Exactly that.

SPEAKER_02

All it takes is s the sound mixing being a bit off whack, the camera lingering a little bit too much, and then suddenly you're into like, oh, it's a 12-year-old, shut the fuck up.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Whereas, yeah, as you say, if it had been cut in a slightly more delicate, like understanding, like balanced way, then you would have been like, I get why she's doing this, and I get why he's doing it. And probably at the time it felt that way, it's just that now, like, it's just not aged at all. I've actually just thought of this. I think the film's kind of like a coming-of-age story. That the film plays a lot with a bunch of genres, yeah. Uh yeah, she's 12, but she's a sort of like precocious 12-year-old. She's she keeps smoking all the time. She's a bit of like a Jolly Foster in in Taxi Driver character, and that you know, prematurely old in that way that makes you really sad. Like you look at her and you're like, please go be a kid a bit more. You're too you're too sad and forlorn for your age.

SPEAKER_00

And of course, there's this constant playing between her and Leon as in he wants to have his childhood back.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And they do similarly they do together childlike things. So you mentioned about the milk. I mean Leon also goes to get milk, which is a distinctively childlike thing. Milk is something that we associate very closely with childhood and with having a nice family, wholesome family environment.

SPEAKER_02

It's also the nineties, like the peak of They're all obsessed with milk, aren't they? It was like it was literally big milk.

SPEAKER_00

It was actually big milk. It was. I remember being told yes all about that. Anyway, uh yeah, so I think that um the the ick element is is very much a thing. But the basics of what they're trying to do are sort of sound, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02

Absolutely fascinating. But I think in a lesser actor, we were talking about this. Natalie Portman, uh, this was her first role. Interestingly, her parents changed her name. So her name is not Natalie Portman, that's her that's a sort of like acting name. And they were quite explicit, they come from like a well-to-do uh Jewish New York family, and apparently they were like, listen, kid, if this doesn't work out, then you can go back to being like your normal self, go to uni, get a good education, have a normal life. As it turns out, she was unbelievably talented, and I think it was only three or four years later that she got cast in Star Wars.

SPEAKER_00

And there's this lovely irony here because she's being cast in a thing. So the there's an irony in the title of the film, The On the Professional. It's actually not about him being a professional, it's about his home life.

SPEAKER_02

Right. And it's also about him kind of not being unprofessional, but yeah, breaking all of the rules. Breaking all the rules. Yeah, of his professionalism.

SPEAKER_00

Um, and also develop getting his private life by teaching somebody his professional life.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Getting a daughter by teaching her how to be a hit woman. I think though that there's also it's also interesting because Natalie Portman is herself coming into this film and it's She's learning from him. She's learning from him. Like it's kind of developing. It it's quite interesting how they how they did that.

SPEAKER_02

And I don't know, Jeanne Renaud was a big star, like a big, big star in France by this point. It's lovely how he has a thick accent. It's meant to be an Italian accent.

SPEAKER_00

I didn't even I didn't even know. It was just European.

SPEAKER_02

Unrecognizable, yeah. I think at some point it was it is implied that like he came from like Sicily or something, and you're like, well. But yes, Jeanne Renaud was a was a big figure, he was the big draw for the film, whereas Natalie Paulman was like this, you know, literally just tiny child. Uh but she she fills the screen. I think a less talented kid.

SPEAKER_00

She dominates the film and has the best lines as well. Has the best lines. Certainly, uh, I mean Gary Altman is very, you know, intimidating and scary and so on, but yes, she does fill the screen. She's also very believable. So she's like this you it's it's it's a very ludicrous concept.

SPEAKER_02

It's a it's such a cinematic concept with the idea that oh you teach a 12-year-old girl how to be a also there's there's a couple of really funny scenes of that where they're going to do a hit to do a job, and it's like quite an easy one. So he literally takes her into the the house of this um drug dealer who's like just cutting, oh he's like a drug person, right? He's just like he's cutting like cocaine, and he literally like points at him, gets her to point at the guy and shoot like um like uh pain balls, and like the guy is just sort of like, what the fuck is happening? And then without missing a beat, he just goes and shoots him. It's like, oh yeah, this was all just practice. Like it's so it shouldn't be funny, but it is so funny.

SPEAKER_00

Highlighted there, I think, my other big problem with the film, which is the immorality, the amorality of Leon himself. This is just the film just doesn't care about his moral standing. I mean, the guy just goes around killing people for a living, yeah. And he displays no remorse, he displays no real reason behind his actions, he doesn't even get loads of money for it.

SPEAKER_02

He doesn't think about it.

SPEAKER_00

Like he doesn't think about it, and I don't think the film thinks about it, and I think that that's bad.

SPEAKER_02

I don't so okay, the the film implies that the people who are getting killed are always baddies. So they're always like drug dealers, they're doing like dodgy stuff. So the the film tells you that the people that are getting hit on the clients, as they're called before they get killed, um, are all baddies. So at least that's bad, right? Like she's you know, they have they continue to have this re this refrain, like, no women, no kids, like throughout the sort of even though she is a woman and a kid, which is obviously the woman. Exactly. That's that's supposed to be the funny thing about it. And I think he is meant to be like the ultimate professional because he doesn't question it. He is he's someone who can't read, he doesn't really have much of a backstory beyond the fact that he loved a girl back in Italy. She died because her dad killed her.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Um, and I have a lot to say about that. Um and and so it's it's kind of like what would make the best hitman? And it's it's a topic that Jason Statham has explored at length. We have now been served many, many examples of what being a the best hitman looks like, you know, the sort of person without a past, completely untethered. He's he makes the joke that I like this plant, you know, the one that he looks after because it has no roots, and it's like okay.

SPEAKER_00

I've forgotten that looking. It's very thick like the I mean I I wanted to make strokes. I I wanted to make the point there that um the the greatest film by far, in my opinion, about a hitman is The Day of the Jackal. You said, yeah. And I I which I think is superb. And in The Day of the Jackal, the whole point is that it's about the man with no name, and they they try they spend the whole film trying to find out who he is, and then spoiler warning, they they don't. Um there are also some little very subtle, I think, elements of the Day of the Jackal in this film. So there is a particular line, well, not line, because it is consistent throughout the film, but Leon refers to his the people he is killing as his clients. Yes. Right. Which of course is very funny and great. But it really reminds me of it really reminds me of how in the Day of the Jackal there are a couple of examples of where basically the professional killers kind of refer to their subjects in that same ironic way. So there's a line where the jackal is is buying a gun from another essentially ex-hitman, and uh the guy says to the jackal, um, will the gentleman be standing? He says.

SPEAKER_01

Wow.

SPEAKER_00

Um and th that that as in the gentleman. So to Leon, the people he's murdering in cold-blooded clients, and to the jackal, they are gentlemen. And there's just this lovely irony of that, but it also adds this element of sort of, as I said, class, which I don't think the film explores. I think it just has this guy being completely immoral and it doesn't explain.

SPEAKER_02

Well, okay, because I think this is a very French film. It is a French film through and through. So I think a a more English film would have been concerned with class. I think this film is less concerned with class, it is really concerned with like the communities of New York and is kind of fascinated with that. I love the fact that all of the signs in the background are all in Spanish. So it's I'm gonna get my geography of New York wrong, but I understand. I think there's like Queens that has got a big Cuban community.

SPEAKER_00

There's locally and Puerto Rican.

SPEAKER_02

There's like there's a few times where there's like clearly like a Cuban flag like outside. Obviously, there's the Italian um community of it all. There's a moment which is kind of one of my favourite moments where like Gary Allman goes to see Big Tony. Big Tony at the Italian restaurant with the little with the little like porcelain figurines of pigs. Just, I'm sorry, like visually amazing. So and they're having a birthday party and he goes, oi, oi, like kids go into the kitchen. It's just it's great.

SPEAKER_00

And then they're like and then he entertains Natalie Portman later by making a sort of oven glove into a pig.

SPEAKER_02

Oh I know, it's so cute. That is a dunno one, but no, this is this is Fat Tony we're talking about, so not not Leo. So so Gary Oman goes to the.

SPEAKER_00

Tony is from The Simpsons.

SPEAKER_02

I know, but it's the same thing. It's the same dude. And it's also like um fuck is the actor. Oh my god. Uh a really famous Italian actor, Italian American actor.

SPEAKER_00

I recognised him, but I didn't.

SPEAKER_02

It's also in the Spike Jones film from uh literally a couple of um uh years earlier, which we will talk about uh do the right thing. So he and he plays a pizzeria owner and do the right thing. He then gets to like Luperton gets into players. It's just it makes perfect sense. Anyway, so Gary Orman is hit across from Father and he goes, you know, you guys in the Italian community, we've never complained about you guys. You guys have killed some guys for us before, and that's all been nice for us. And there's this like really weird thing where you're like, maybe Gary Orman is a bit of like the old New York Irish community or something. Like there's just this like weird visual like thing going on. So I I think the film is not interested in class, but it is really interesting in like the the in in a slightly satirical non-American way looking into the New York uh tribes and like how they engage with each other. Again, totally cinematic. I don't think Luc Besson really knew New York. I think he was I think he was fascinated by New York. I'm not sure that he knew it.

SPEAKER_00

The depiction of New York is visually not really like what New York is like, and it's also it's it as you say, it's very cinematic and something about the saturation, like it's very yellow.

SPEAKER_02

It's beautiful, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I mean it's it is, but it also makes it feel not like it is like it feels like a dreamy, I guess, New York.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I mean, three years later, New York would be home to Sex in the City, and if you look aesthetically at the two cities, you'll be like, are these the same players? Like, what is going on? So uh so yeah, it's slightly caricaturesque, but it it works really well. So I I love that kind of like outsider looking into the city because it works for the story because it's a bit larger than life, it is a bit exaggerated, and what what he's also what he also does really well, and this is in the first shots and then the in the final shots as well, is come out of Central Park, come out of the trees of Central Park, and then go back into them at the end.

SPEAKER_00

And that basically shows two things. First of all, it's obviously distinctively sort of New York, but it well, maybe three things. First of all, it shows it's distinctively New York. Secondly, it shows the wildness, I think. So it's like you're sort of coming, you're you're in you immediately get the sense of wow, it's a New York's a jungle. And then also thirdly, it ha it creates this sense of the complexity of the forest and the way that the trees become anonymous and blend into each other, in the same way that Leon is able to just be a hitman and be an anonymous hitman because it's New York.

SPEAKER_02

And get in the subway.

SPEAKER_00

He gets on the subway, it's like a normal day in the office. Like it like because it's New York, so nobody's paying attention because it's the super busy city.

SPEAKER_02

I have to say, like the way that it's shot at the beginning, I was like, This cannot be by coincidence. It looks like the shining. Do you remember? Like the the shots of the of the forest as they as they're going in.

SPEAKER_00

It's exactly like the start of the shining. I really want to talk about the visuals in this. Let's go.

SPEAKER_02

I will have some stuff about daddy issues. I will I'll look at that later.

SPEAKER_00

Gonna say we need to come back to that yet.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So I think the visuals in this are completely excellent. I was really, really impressed by it seeing it from the first time. I think that's basically the reason that it's so iconic, yeah. Um how to describe it? I mean, I would compare it to firstly, aesthetically, there's a sort of aesthetic sense of maybe sort of like Hong Kong cinema from that period, which I think is like very comparable to this. Um another film that we've talked about, which I would compare to it, would maybe be train spotting made uh at almost exactly the same time. Yeah. And that's because what they're really doing that they're really thinking about the camera, right? So Blue Press on the director, he's really trying to work out how can I make this shot more interesting than it would be if I just sort of had the camera in a rap it in like a stationary place, and and he's like constantly thinking, so how can I add things to people's faces or to the introductions of characters? The introductions of characters in this film are really good. So really, really good. And you immediately learn things about them. And it's very noticeable actually that and this is the sign, basically the sign of a of a really accomplished director, is how they're using the visual medium of film to tell you things without any lines being spoken or any crap like economic.

SPEAKER_02

Very economic. Exactly, very economic.

SPEAKER_00

Sorry, so it reduces you know it reduces the runtime in a basic sense, but the the visuals of this film are the main thing, the actual you could tell what was going on, I think, without people actually saying anything.

SPEAKER_02

Totally. Like the way the characters are introduced are amazing. If we just run through the the main three characters, Leon, we don't see his face for the first solid eight to ten minutes. We just see we see the hand drinking milk, talking to Fat Tony. Um we see him, we see the other, the other, like the crooks going into the flat, we see them getting killed one by one, like like he's he's like um the Velota Raptor in Jurassic Park, right? Is that sort of like invisible killer? And the the first time we see him is when he grabs the neck, he like a knife comes out of the dark and grabs the neck of the again big crook dude, and we just see like Leon's like profile with the tiny Le Corbousier glasses, epic, epic shot. It's so good.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, okay, epic shot and all that kind of okay film, bro. But basically, I would I would say, well, yes, but it's depicting him as the you know, he's a contract killer, but it's just saying, Oh, he's kind of cool, you know. Oh, but it's against the immorality.

SPEAKER_02

It isn't immorality. I think Lupasson cannot help himself but do something that is cool and glamorous, and I'll come back to that in one of the things to do with the music. So, yes, I agree, but also in the in the next moment, they call the boss and he goes, um, tell him to leave the city and never come back again and make sure he understands. And you as the audience go, oh shit, he's gonna like slice his face or something, you know. They're like, make sure he doesn't, but he doesn't, right? He just goes, Have you understood? And he goes, Yes, and it's like, okay, you can go. So there's that dichotomy of like someone who's just murdered like five dudes in a flat, and also kind of going, Well, he understood it, so off you go. I don't care. So it is interesting, like he holds both, and there's a moment where Natalie Portman has come to stay with him and it's the first night that she's staying in, and he wakes up in the middle of the night and points a gun at her head because he's like, What's one more person? What's one you know, if it's a kid, and this problem would be gone, and he stops himself. And I think it's such a good character development scene. It takes 15 seconds, but it is a great way of going. This for this guy, killing has become a sort of non-issue, right? Like, it is just a matter of convenience of blah, but he goes back to the only maxim, which is no women, no children, so he doesn't.

SPEAKER_01

Yes.

SPEAKER_02

Um, anyway, so anyway, the way that we get introduced to Antipark, I generally think is wonderful. She is this little tiny girl having a fag uh in the stairwell in the apartment, and she looks so tiny. Like, I just looked at it this time and it's so purposefully done. She's this teeny tiny figure just like hunched over.

SPEAKER_00

Doing a very childlike thing, idea of sort of swinging her legs, which is a distinctively childlike behaviour.

SPEAKER_02

While she's also lighting up a cigarette, which is just it feels so wrong.

SPEAKER_00

And then then there are two other fantastic bits of character introduction in around that time. So, firstly, of her her father, her biological father, who is depicted as just sort of shoes and like these slightly silly trousers.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And that's like there was this programme on Cartoon Network called Cow and Chicken.

SPEAKER_02

I love Cow and Chicken. Yeah, so I really like it as well.

SPEAKER_00

Uh we took the piss out of this by that the parents of Cow and Chicken were depicted as just being legs.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. But by the way, Yogos Lanthim was did that in Dogtooth as a bit of a joke.

SPEAKER_00

I've not seen Dogtooth, actually.

SPEAKER_02

But it's great, it's great. But it does the same thing where like everyone's kind of portrayed from like the chest app.

SPEAKER_00

But but the the point is that what it's doing here is that it's showing you that her father is A, distant, and B not really a full person to her. And you're so you're and you're also seeing him from her perspective. So really, really excellent introduction. Yeah. And then immediately after that, Gary Alburn's character is introduced, and he's introduced in a way that makes him basically it's quite basic technique, really, but it kind of basically makes him seem like more of a sort of badass figure. So he's just from behind, and that means that you don't see his face, so again, you're sort of removed from his humanity, which is correct, because it's a psychopath.

SPEAKER_02

Also, by the way, but Leon 1994, this is the first it's one of the first times that this is done so well. We've grown tired of this trope because this film was so filmed.

SPEAKER_00

This film created a lot of the tropes that we now associate. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Um we get introduced to him by uh the his number two, who is like an eminently sensible killer, going, Look, you're not you don't want me to ask him questions because he will know if you're lying, right? He's he's talking to the dad, is like, did you cut the the drugs, did uh the cocaine, or did you not? Like, and so you've got Gary Allman just there, like not being bothered because he's literally like a dog, a rabid dog about to be unleashed, and you just see him like turn around, have a pill of presumably some like mental amphetamine or something, and like the camera shoots up and you you see him from above as he's sort of like crooking his neck and just getting ready to be an absolute mentalist. Like it's horrendous. Actually, no, I get this wrong because that's the next day. So when we get introduced to him, he doesn't do that whole shtick, he just sort of like touch like touches the guy's face in a very homorotic way and goes, like, if you don't solve this by tomorrow midday, and it sort of gets lingered, but they anyway, the three characters get introduced beautifully, right? You've got like the the hid man who is sort of like a little bit cum si cum sa about killing, you've got the young kid who is by the way introduced with a black eye, clearly she's getting beaten at home, like horrible stuff, uh, and then Gary Ollman, total psychopath, and it's done so well. Like it visually, there were I hadn't seen this film in like 15 years, and there were shots of this film that I was like it's just unforgettable.

SPEAKER_00

Well, I just think that I I just repeat what I said about like visually you don't need the dialogue in this film to know what's going on. Another thing visually that they do that I really like is they create little physical manifestations of the characters. So rather than just as a bad film would do, sort of tell you about how the characters are feeling or whatever, they will do things like Leon has a plant, so he's always spraying the plant, and it gives him something to do in the scene, but then it also shows you that he is a caring person. He's somewhat childlike because he's looking after a plant, which somehow feels sort of very innocent, but he also wants to be a father.

SPEAKER_02

It also introduces the only uh point of uh nature and green vision is really cool.

SPEAKER_00

So as as per coming out of Central Park.

SPEAKER_02

There you go.

SPEAKER_00

And that is just really nicely done, and the plant remains this kind of trope. It's something that Wes Anderson does a lot. I'm not like a gigantic Wes Anderson fan, but it's something where he's able to identify these essentially props or like inanimate objects and then use them repeatedly to demonstrate emotional points. And that's just what you're saying.

SPEAKER_02

And and make you get really attached to it, right?

SPEAKER_00

You really care about the plants.

SPEAKER_02

You really care about the plant. Like what if it what if it dies? There's a point at the end where they're being they're besieged, they're in the flood, and it looks it looks bad, like it doesn't look like they're gonna make it. And he literally, the first thing he does, even even before making sure that she's okay, is he puts the plant like surrounded by like a like a blanket and like throws it down a thing and then and then puts her in the thing in the chute so she can she can uh get rescued. And you you generally kind of go like I hope that plant's okay. I like I hope it made it. Um so yeah, no, it it works really, really well. I I love like little visual motifs, the fact that the sister who's tragically gets killed at the beginning, and I I have to say they really frondload a lot of the violence. They they they top and tail the violence in a way that actually reminds me a little bit of uh Lincoln, which we covered recently, whereas there's like horrific stuff at the beginning, horrific stuff at the end, and and in the the middle is is is the actual development of the story, it's not particularly violent during during the middle of the film. Uh, but the sister gets uh murdered as she's doing like the most stereotypically like 90s like Jane Fonda style like exercises, which she then copies, but like visually it just feels so 90s, or like she's watching Transformers. Did you see that? Like she's always watching Transformers on television.

SPEAKER_00

So she she loves watching cartoons.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And what's also quite cool about that is that the trope of her watching cartoons and watching these Transformers which bend themselves is reflected in what her sister's watching, which is a kind of workout video. Yeah. And then it's it's reflected in what Leon is doing, which is basically sort of working out and bending himself. So all the characters are involved in these ways of like twisting their bodies, and also making making themselves into something else, right?

SPEAKER_02

Like they're not gonna be able to do that. Yeah, like that.

SPEAKER_00

And that is very nicely and subtly done through the visuals.

SPEAKER_02

Well, exactly. So like that you've got the Transformers and they're doing the whole shake, and then you see Jean Renault like putting all the guns and like the cinches and like you know, the like his well ironed jacket and stuff, and his like little beanie. Like everything, he's like an athlete, right? Like everything has to be kind of just right to go and do a hit. Like do you know what I mean? There's there's a scene at the beginning where they they that they're doing a hit together and it's like one of the first times and he he carefully puts his beanie on before they start. Like, I can't, you know, like Rafa Nadal with like the the tennis balls.

SPEAKER_00

You were interested a lot in the music and the tennis, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Um okay, so the the music as they say it's laps, it's so good. Uh they had is it Eric Serra uh do the music? The soundscape is very similar to the fifth element. You really see Luc Bisson testing things out for what would then be the fifth element. I watched it not that long ago. I really go back to that film, I think it is just such an accomplishment.

SPEAKER_00

I don't really like the fifth element. But I haven't seen it for a very long time, so maybe I should try it again.

SPEAKER_02

It's so fun and weird and it shouldn't work, but it does. Uh and it's also inspired in things like Stargate, like it just it I it's genuinely novel. Uh but the sound skip is very reminiscing of that. So Leon is kind of like a simpler version of like this more operatic, you know, space sci-fi situation. Um, but it it is so eerie and so new. Like when Leon is doing this first hit uh in the New York apartment, it just it doesn't sound like anything that you would have heard before in a thriller. And I I genuinely cannot put my finger on it. If we have anyone who listens to our podcast who is a sound engineer, I would generally welcome notes on like what it is that it is doing, but it is not the sounds of New York, it is not it is not diegetic sounds, it's something else. It's this like ominous undercurrent. I would say when we were talking about the Jonathan Glazer uh film, The Zone of Interest, there was a similar conversation about like the layering of sounds. So like here you've got like this soundscape, and then you've got the Eric Sarah music, uh you know, which grows and grows and it's got this sort of like orientalist thing to it that is very early 90s that worked really well. Um and then there's a bit that is in the theatrical release that is not in the director's cut. I did you watch the director's cut?

SPEAKER_00

No, I watched the theatrical release. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02

No, both both, but both of them are great. I the first, well, the the only version I had ever seen was So when Gary Olman goes to the house, does Beethoven play in the background?

SPEAKER_00

No, it's not Beethoven, it was something else.

SPEAKER_02

It was Eric Sarah, right?

SPEAKER_00

Like it's just you just you just hear And I was rather confused because I thought, why aren't they playing? They must have made some decision not to play Beethoven.

SPEAKER_02

Right, so in the original cut, it is Beethoven, and that's how I remember it as a kid. And apparently Lupuson has since said that he very quickly in future versions uh cut it because it glamorised the scene, it really centered it on Gary Ullman and his experience and his cool thing, like him in his head with the Beethoven, blah blah. Whereas it is way more horrifying, and I think it is true, it is way more horrifying that you don't. Like you think he's you think you're gonna go into this sort of like and then you know, Beethoven, and then it doesn't. It's just him going into someone's house and murdering a bunch of children and a and a and a woman. It's like it's so horrifying. Uh but I I did I genuinely like stood up when we were watching, I was like, hold on a minute, that's not how I remember it at all. And yeah, it turns out that they they had done it on purpose. So the Eric Sarah that you hear is it was actually done, it was actually done afterwards, like after the film had been released. But one thing that I'll say in the introduction of Gary Allman, right? You have this maybe this sense of like Leon maybe having some kind of like samurai-like moral code. And by the way, this film looks a lot like the French film Le Samurai. So you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, even down to the aesthetic of the Leon characters. 100%, totally, apart from the trilby, like yeah, but he's got the hat and yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Everything else, and the big coat and stuff. Um so he has some kind of moral code. Gary Allman, the first thing that we see of him is he goes into a house and murders a woman and three kids, like just c like cold. Like the other guys behind him don't even shoot at all until right at the very end. Because they're just so scared by what this guy is doing. They're just like, what the fuck? So it's a great character introduction, it's absolutely horrifying. I remember like watching it first time and should be like, what the fuck? Like, I just I couldn't sleep for days. Um, but yeah, so it's it's really good. I think the music works beautifully. Uh as I say, like it's got this kind of like weird, like North African genesic choir about it that just it just works. And yeah, as I say, if you watch this film and then watch uh Fifth Element back to back, it's like, oh yeah, it's kind of the same, it's kind of the same music in it.

SPEAKER_00

Well, maybe I will give Fifth Element another go.

SPEAKER_02

It's great! We're gonna say it's very fun, it works. I just that's great, it's stupid and it's wonderful. Uh it shouldn't work, but it does. Kind of like this film, it kind of shouldn't work, but sort of it does. Um, and I love how committed he was to doing something really nice. Films that this film has been really influential on. You mentioned Wes Anderson. If you look at this film and then the Royal Ted and Bounds, which is 98, 99, like really not that long afterwards.

SPEAKER_00

Maybe 2000.

SPEAKER_02

Maybe 2001, actually, yeah, sorry, it's just over. So he would have done Rocket uh not launch, whatever the one he first did, uh Bottle Rocket. Uh, and then Royal Tetanbound, very similar aesthetic. Um Amelie.

SPEAKER_00

I mean Amelie the the aesthetic is very similar. Uh I think with Wes Anderson, I think a scene that particularly reminded me of that is the way that you have Matilda, played by Natalie Portman, going around chewing gum, sticking the gum on the what would they even be called?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, like the um yeah, the eyelet. The eyelet or the eye thingy of the door, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Sticking gum on the eyelet of the doors of people that Lion is about to kill. And that obviously, first of all, you know, she's a child helping to kill people, and it's all about her growing up and so on. But that is a very Wes Anderson thing. So the idea that you'd have this little sort of malleable, colourful thing that you could then use to advance. It's so gross as well.

SPEAKER_02

It's like enormous.

SPEAKER_00

Every time it's like So you're forced to think about it because it's disgusting. So that's a very clever use of essentially a sort of physical item.

SPEAKER_02

And a really good thing for the actors to be able to do a repeat. Repeat, exactly. Because they repeat it like five, six, seven times.

SPEAKER_00

So this is all just really, really well done. I really like it.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, it it it really works, and like you you're absolutely right. All of the apartments that they're at, because obviously initially they go to his apartment, very quickly he realizes they can't stay there because next door is a crime scene, they're gonna be found out uh and they're gonna they're gonna get killed. Because obviously the the um the the narcs know that they've missed a kid, right? They're like they've killed, they've killed two, they've killed their mum, they've killed a dad, uh, but they know there's a third one, so and they know what she looks like. So anyway, so they have to go to a different flat and then and then to another one because she gets weird anyway. This again, one of those things that just doesn't work, where she says to the guy who runs the middle apartment that like she's having an affair with with Leon and it's like it's so wrong, it's so wrong. It I you could have taken that scene out and it would have been fine, generally. Like you you did not need it. Um but yeah, so uh the aesthetic in all of the places is fascinating. Did you see how there's like a Virgin Mary in loads of places? Yeah, you've got like a real sort of like Italian religious thing, you've got like a little Virgin Mary like.

SPEAKER_00

Well, you say Italian religious thing, I mean I would say I would kind of say that's an example of where it's getting a bit too up itself. Like, what does that really mean or necessarily really refer to?

SPEAKER_02

Well, when we talked about the substance, uh we talked about the fact that there's no religion in that film. The the first film from the same director, Revenge, has the same aesthetic. So again, another film that I reckon has been quite influenced by it. Because she would have been she would have been in her twenties in the 90s when this film came out.

SPEAKER_00

So what about this father-daughter relationship?

SPEAKER_02

The more I think about it, the more I think like that is the actual politics of the film.

SPEAKER_00

Um the film is not very political apart from through this lens.

SPEAKER_02

I mean, it it has an overarching sense of like the politics of New York in the 90s. You've got the sort of like potentially slightly corrupt businessman with his detail running through uh Central Park, and they practice her aim by shooting pain balls at his chest, which is very funny, and it is absolutely meant to be Donald Trump. I'm sorry, it is absolutely definitely 1000% meant to be Donald Trump, like what the fuck. Um so there's there's this there's this sort of like general politics of rampant capitalism, poor Cuban and Puerto Rican communities v the you know the rich people of Central Park. He seems to mostly work in Central Park, whereas he lives in what looks like Queens. So there's like that sort of like crossing worlds and stuff, but like it ain't political, like really, it's just much more about yeah, it is much more about like the tropes of of a thriller than than it is about anything else. However, the dad thing this film tells us at several points that this film is about bad dads. Like from the very beginning, you talked about Nato Pullman's dad being introduced, and it is true very quickly. He's lying because he has definitely cut the coke, he is lying because he treats his children like shit, and he is lying because he's just he's just like oh, by the way, when his entire family is getting slaughtered, all he's doing is hiding. He can hear his family getting killed, but what he's doing is hiding to try and save himself, which is horrendous. So, bad dad number one, uh, you have got the guy who runs the Urpart Hotel that they rent, he says to her, so they pretend that she's there to practice violin, whatever. And he says to her, Oh, you know, such an accomplice young woman, so different to my own. They they're so lazy, they're like they're layabouts, and this is this whole thing about like dads continually complaining about their kids being shit, including I think Fat Tony also has a refrain against his own children.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that doesn't surprise me either.

SPEAKER_02

And I just remember by the third one I was like, I think this I think the script is telling us something here. Like this film is telling you all of these men, most of these men, most men are bad dads. The most unlikely person to end up being a good dad and to do the ultimate sacrifice is this fucking guy who is an Italian hitman who has never cared for anything apart from a plant.

SPEAKER_00

But he does desperately want fatherhood though.

SPEAKER_02

Do you think? Because he's really reluctant, like she really has to wheedle her way, like he's gonna kill her first night.

SPEAKER_00

But I think that he overcomes that.

SPEAKER_02

Is he like afraid?

SPEAKER_00

The film is about him overcoming that.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And the the final symbol of their uh relationship as father and daughter, adoptive father and daughter, is how he shows her a special thing, i.e., a piece of a grenade, and then he ultimately uses that to show that he's going to sacrifice himself to get rid of the psychopath who would otherwise kind of.

SPEAKER_02

By self sacrifice. And then and then the next time we see the grenade, he's saving her by sacrificing a self-control.

SPEAKER_00

Which is the ultimate example of parenthood. Self sacrifice.

SPEAKER_02

Totally. And going back to like how the visuals are just so fucking good, when We see Natalie Pullman coming back from the shops with the milk at the beginning of the film. Her family's getting slaughtered. She, teeny tiny little girl, walks through head down, goes to his door, and her face is quite dark, right? Because she's against the the door in a corridor. And she's like she's like crying, she's like, please, please answer the door, please answer the door. And he hesitates for like a solid half a minute, so we're just there, like, are you gonna let this kid die? And then he opens the door, and where we see is we see a shot of like really up close of her face going from like pure darkness to this like light, right? Like as if she's seen God, as if she's seen like the light that gets repeated at the end of the film where uh Jean Renault has gone down all bloodied, he's pretended to be a cop so that he can get out of the building and he's walking towards the outside of the building, and it's the same thing as like a shot of his face going from the darkness to like this moment of like beauty, like he's seen Nirvana, he's seen what maybe the future, as you say, of being a dad looks like, and it's done so well because it's just you know, his face lighting up with like the natural daylight. So good, so beautiful. I I I know it's tropey, but it works. You know?

SPEAKER_00

I I think it works. I think it does work, but then we still haven't. Well, we talked at the start, but we haven't gone back to it yet. The this issue of just how it's a bit creepy and gross.

SPEAKER_02

It is. This is the problem, right? Like, all of the bits that are wonderful are then undercut by these bits where you're like, you didn't need to do that. Like he buys her a little dress.

SPEAKER_00

I think that's the thing, is ultimately it's that it just goes a bit too far.

SPEAKER_02

That's basically what the And apparently Lou Besson is a fucking creep, and like I just Well of course he is.

SPEAKER_00

Of course.

SPEAKER_02

Precisely, who existed in the like 80s and 90s. Yes. It those were the rules. Um yeah, like they yeah, anyway, just a very strong.

SPEAKER_00

I think I think so I think that yes, it it sort of I sort of thought, you know, this is good, but I wouldn't go much further than that because of this just kind of grim aspect, which I think is just very it's just nasty, like it's just pointless. And I think that it adds nothing to the genuinely interesting dynamic of this guy who wants fatherhood and a girl who wants father.

SPEAKER_02

I think so I think our style of uh our I think the uh the general style of filmmaking has progressed to be more naturalistic, I think. W with some variations, right? But like you look at scripts in the nineties and they're they're kind of being quite forceful in telling you what is happening, uh which I love and is lovely, but you you can recognise a nineties script, I think. Whereas I I think I I don't know, I think there's a little bit more subtlety in the way that especially indie films, and fundamentally this is still an indie film, it wasn't a mainstream movie, um are shot and depicted, and I I think there's something of that. There's something of the sort of like, hey, this girl is maybe developing feelings, right? Like it's just hammering it over your head when it's like you didn't need to do that. You could have trusted the audience. I like it reminds me of seven in that way. Do you know what I mean? Like seven is like very over the top.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, I think that's a good description. Actually, the the visual aesthetic is rather similar to 7, which is insanely also, I mean, it's a better than this, but it's a it's a very good action film. Also from that.

SPEAKER_02

I I I reckon uh I reckon Loupesson was watching Fincher in Alien 3, in like all of the stuff, and just kind of going, yeah, this this guy's great.

SPEAKER_00

I think one thing is that because the visual style is very aggressively exaggerated in a way that I think to be clear is really excellent.

SPEAKER_02

Yes, so good.

SPEAKER_00

That visual style sort of bleeds a bit into the it reflects the way that the rest of the film exact exaggerates.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, big visuals for big story kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Except that bit of the big story, it's like, yeah, didn't need to. Um so no, I completely agree with that. There's there's something beyond the whole uh father-daughter thing, which is there's there's like kind of interesting, very French ideals of very very French ideas looking at the states of what masculinity and femininity look like. So they do this whole thing where they play char charades with each other, and she again is like the fucking choice of it. Like she plays Marilyn Monroe to him and Charlie Chaplin. Charlie Chaplin would no the first one is like really concerning where I was like, Why are you dressing her? Or Madonna like a virgin, Jesus fucking Christ.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, you're like, Why? Um, and the one that he recognises, of course, is her playing Gene Kelly, which is what he's been going to see at the cinema. He's a guy who during the day when he's not doing hits, he's watching Jean Kelly.

SPEAKER_00

And I'm like, Well, this is the thing, he's this is what he he wants to be spending his time. I I I don't know about Luc Besson or whatever's personal life, but this is somebody who wants to spend his time looking after children, but actually is spending it assing around watching films.

SPEAKER_02

We have talked a lot about directors putting themselves in in films, and yeah, you know, would a Luc Besson look would a Lars Vontrier, right? Like, is is he uh uh kissed and danced in melancholy? Who's to know when he said he has depression? So yeah, it like all of these people are kind of like just playing themselves a little bit. Um but there's a moment where like he then he then takes over, like Leon takes over in the game and then plays John Wayne, which is just like, yeah, of course, of course he would. Of course he would.

SPEAKER_00

Uh French person or French director's conception of American cinema. Masculinity. Cinema and masculinity.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, 100%, 100%. There's the sort of like you've got you've got silent cinema, you've got Marilyn Monroe as like the ultimate ideal of like of a of a bombshell, and you've got John Wayne as the ultimate man, right? Like, do you remember like Catherine Hebbutt apparently was like so in love with him, and she was like, Yeah, he was he was the real man. Like, none of you weedy fucks, which is so funny. Um, so I I like that it plays with it. Like, I love this is why I mentioned the thing about the the Transformers. Like, she starts off as a little kid, she's fighting with her sister for her to stop playing the aerobics show and for her to watch Transformers, right? She wants to stay a kid, she plays up to being the kid. Yeah, and then somewhere in the midpoint of the film, she is training with Jeanne Renault and with Leon and and she puts on the she puts on the aerobic, like you know, the sort of Jane Fonda style videos on the telly.

SPEAKER_00

So she's learning she's learning from her older sister.

SPEAKER_02

As to be a woman, yeah, she's sort of reminiscing of that play performing being a woman.

SPEAKER_00

She also kind of plays at motherhood. So I mean there's obviously a lot you could say around the attitude to women that that's expressed by this, but she at one point is kind of like behaves like a mother to Leon. So like, you know, he's asleep, she covers him with a blanket, that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. And forces him to sleep not in the chair in the armchair, but in the bed. Yes.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_02

Which you think is sexual, and you're like, for the love of God, no, and all that it means is go relax, sit down.

SPEAKER_00

It's her becoming that's not one of the creepy bits, that that it's her becoming a a maternal figure.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Um and I I wish they'd played with that. I wish they'd done that instead. That they had started off with her being this teeny tiny little girl and then ended with like a little bit of role robust. That would have been really interesting without the fing creepy stuff in the middle about like her being in love with him. Um so yeah, uh Robin, what is your favourite film in uh favourite film? What is your favourite scene in the film?

SPEAKER_00

Well, this is very horrible and disgusting to have to admit, but there is a particular visual which I think is very impressive, whereby there are three shots of a woman, Matilda's mother, in a very bubbly bath. And she is She's got grey boobs. Like we I wasn't I honestly didn't see it.

SPEAKER_02

Honestly, I did.

SPEAKER_00

Well, you noticed, okay.

SPEAKER_02

I mean, the whole world noticed.

SPEAKER_00

Well, okay. Incredible boobs. So leaving that aside, she's in this very bubbly bath. Yeah, boobs in question are not on display.

SPEAKER_02

No, there was before.

SPEAKER_00

But um, and she's listening very happily to some kind of nice music or something. What awesome. And the sh and it's just three shots. So it's her listening to the nice music with the bubbly bath. Then guy comes in and shoots her with a shotgun. It's horrif as I said, this is horrible. The blood and the bubbles go everywhere. And then the only other reference to this is the fact that you see the back of the bath with a sort of hole in it.

SPEAKER_02

With a with a single shot, like with a blood coming out, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Now, is this horrible and disgusting? Yes. But I think that if you're going to make a violent action film, that kind of thing is how you should do it, because not only is it, well, obviously very memorably horrible, but it's also actually telling you something about the story, like it's telling you she is in a domestic environment. The domestic environment that is corrupted, Matilda's domestic environment is corrupted. So you sort of learn something from that. But to be clear, the reason I'm mentioning it now is because it's so memorably disgusting. I'm not really sure I even want to talk particularly positively about it.

SPEAKER_02

No, exactly that, exactly that. I What about you? It's a really good one because that that scene kind of haunts you. And I and I really do mean it. Like the first time I I watched this, it probably was the most violent thing I had seen until that point. Before I watched Full Metal Jacket and was like fully traumatised. Yes. Fully traumatized. Extremely violent. Just horrible. Um but oh man, what would I pick? I love the final, the final kind of like raid on the apartment. And I think that is very Hong Kong. You've got, and it's very funny because you've got increasing amount of coppers trying to take this single guy out, right? You've got Gary Woman being like, send everyone. And it goes like you've got 200 policemen that like, why can't you kill this one guy? How can you not find him? Um, and what he does, which is so original, and at the time I was like, oh my god, this is great, uh, is that he uh he puts on uh a you know SWAT team suit and pretends to be one of them. So he gets taken down, and there's this amazing scene where like the camera is inside of the of the mask that he's wearing and he's going down the stairs with all of the policemen like looking at him, and you're like, and that tension of like if they find him out, he's so cooked, like he is he is so done. And obviously, you are also thinking, like, I hope he makes it, I hope he gets to become the dad that he wants to be. If he he can make it out of this one, they can build a life together, be father and daughter, absolutely, and it will be amazing. And that's why it's so poignant, right? Where you see Gary Allman clocking what's happened and seeing him getting like seen by a doctor, and he goes, I know that phase, and just like scheming. So you it it is that perfect Hitchcockan thing of putting the bomb under the table because we don't see Gary Allman for another five or six minutes. We continue to follow Jean Renault down the building, down to go, down this like long corridor into the light, this tunnel like into the light. Uh, and then he gets shot, he gets shot in the back. He gets shot in the back like like because Gary Allman is nothing but like evil. Of course, he shoots women, kids, and people in the back, like the cowardly fuck that he is. Uh, I I love that scene because it it it's it's heartbreaking, right? It's absolutely heartbreaking. Uh and the next thing that we see is is Natalie Pullman who's been like legitimately like abandoned by everyone. He's she's lost uh everyone, and as a as a character study, it's kind it's kind of a perfect arc. Like she has sort of grown up, she's been forced to grow up, but it's it's kind of horrible. Uh and Leon has also like had this perfect um thing where like he was alone but alive and just surviving, but then he kind of like dies. There's one of like probably my favourite line, which I think is taken from Nikita, which was uh Lu Besson's previous film, is that Natalie Paulman says to him, I don't want to just live, I'm only interested in love and death, which is bonkers, right? And it and it sets up really well what Jan Renault has been doing until now, which is like basically just living, basically just surviving, and she being like, I want the full extent of life, I want I want the big things, which I it spoke to me as a 12-year-old. Uh anyway, so that is my favourite uh scene. Um yeah. Uh should people watch this film?

SPEAKER_00

Well, I think it is visually very good, and I do like some of the sort of themes and so on. Uh I just think it is a bit kind of, you know, come on. Like it's a bit 90s, like they just, you know, fundamentally it involves it goes too close towards the sexualization of a child.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

To like for me to sort of heartily recommend it or whatever, but there's no question that it's got some elements in it that are like artistically very accomplished, and it certainly goes a heck of a long way further than your standard sort of action film. I mean, what do you think?

SPEAKER_02

Uh yeah, I I I agree with you that if I hadn't if it didn't already hold this really special place in my psyche, and I was just watching it and you I would be like, yo, I cannot get past. I cannot like strong red line.

SPEAKER_00

So yeah, we just wouldn't just wouldn't recommend. I mean, it's not kind of like a Woody Allen film or whatever, and you know, I really don't like uh things that you're meant to like, like Annie Hall, because of because of this kind of thing.

SPEAKER_02

But um Well, yeah, although see I find with Woody Allen, maybe again I need to like revisit, but like I watched Woody Allen all through my childhood and twenties, and I loved his work, right? And I and I I that's all I can say about it. Like I loved the work and yeah, yeah, you know, it's just like you look back and you go, Well shit.

SPEAKER_00

Well, yeah, maybe what a piece of work. Maybe, maybe. I mean, I don't know, I always I only saw them as an adult and yeah. But yeah, so I I don't think I'd like to recommend it in that sense, but but if you want an example of how to do some really good visual directing and visual storytelling, yeah, this is a pretty excellent recent example in a mainstream release.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, it's a sort of companion piece to a razor head, a guy who really doesn't want to be a dad.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's actually exactly a companion piece to a razor head. And it's also we haven't talked too much about the city, but it's also about the context of this individual in a city trying to become greater than himself, trying to become a dad.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Well, I think that's pretty interesting.

SPEAKER_02

Self self-actualization, but not with the whole other stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The just please leave Natalie Paulman alone. She was great. Um anyway, it has been a pleasure.

SPEAKER_00

As ever.

SPEAKER_02

And see you in a couple of weeks' time.

SPEAKER_00

And don't forget to comment, rate, like, subscribe, do all the good things.

SPEAKER_02

Comment on our Spotify episode, let's see people do that. Yeah. Love to see it. See you soon. Bye.