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Date: 11/6/2015
The reissue of two films by director Luc Besson on remastered Blu-rays is the subject of this week’s film review column.
Although his career has had its ups and down, Luc Besson has consistently shown – most recently with “Lucy” – that he is an ambitious filmmaker with a wild imagination and a sentimental heart.
Sony has just released two remastered editions of two of Besson’s most popular film, and the result is breathtakingly sharp imagery with soundtracks that should be experienced on a sound system other than the one that came on your television.
Both are films early in his career and both are willing to take chances, which has made me like them even more. Both films are also over-the-top at times, but in a joyful way.
“Leon: The Professional” (1994) stars Jean Reno as a introverted hit man, proficient in his career of killing people, but living a life almost as simple as a monk in New York City.
That existence changes when corrupt Drug Enforcement Agency operatives kill the family next door to him, missing the 12-year-old daughter Mathilda (Natalie Portman).
Leon reluctantly allows Mathilda to stay one night, and instead of being horrified when she discovers what he does for a living, Mathilda is fascinated and wants to be a killer for hire as well.
She wants Leon to hunt down the men who killed her family, something Leon declines to do.
He does decides to teach her how to kill, though, and Besson handles this element of the story as well as their growing relationship in the sweetest way possible. Mathilda is the daughter Leon never thought he could have.
Of course, those DEA guys led by an insane agent named Stansfield (Gary Oldman in a large performance) come back into the film for a pretty amazing climax.
Besson manages to weave together a revenge fueled action story with one about a new family forming. It’s quite a feat.
Portman delivers an amazing performance as Mathilda.
Besson had written the script to “The Fifth Element” (1997) when he was a teen and more than one critic said the film showed that.
It is a science fiction film with the hopeful message that love is the power to keep a person safe in the world.
Set well into the future, a malevolent force is heading to Earth. A priest of an ancient religion (Ian Holm) recognizes it as the ultimate evil that can only be destroyed by the fifth element, an ancient but mysterious weapon.
That weapon turns out to be a young woman Leelo (Milla Jovovich). Her goal is to find four stones that will activate the weapon, and aiding her on this quest is former soldier Korben Dallas (Bruce Willis).
Complicating their search is the weapons manufacturer Zorg (Gary Oldman again in a scene-chewing performance) who wants them for his own purposes.
“The Fifth Element” does feel like it was created by a teen science fiction nerd who was yearning to find the perfect woman. At turns, it’s wacky, sentimental, suspenseful and funny.
As one of the disc’s extras explains, the look of the film was developed by collaborating with two of France’s cartooning legends: Jean-Claude Mezieres and Jean “Mobius” Giraud. The two artists worked with the production crew in the design of costumes, the spacecraft and other elements of the film.
Another extra in which Jovovich is interviewed, she reveals that Besson actually invented the language Leelo uses in the first part of the film, instead of the actress just using gibberish.
Both films are hugely entertaining and have never looked better thanks to this latest remastering.