Luc Besson's first English-language hit is, like much of the Frenchman's work, less than subtle, yet it is stylish, disturbing and weirdly moving.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 11, 2019

Leave it to french writer-director Luc Besson (La Femme Nikita) to put a kinky twist on Orphan Annie and Daddy Warbucks.

Full Review | Jun 4, 2014

Ultimately, like La Femme Nikita, there may be less here than meets the eye. But what does meet the eye is pretty darn thrilling.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 4, 2014

The sheer craziness and excessiveness of the movie -- no crazier, perhaps, than many of the American action movies it copies -- never finds a center of gravity.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 4, 2014

The Professional is strictly amateur-hour.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Jun 4, 2014

Like Quentin Tarantino, Besson has a singular style and directorial sensibility that keeps you watching.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 4, 2014

The most objectionable thing is Gary Oldman's performance, baroque in its awfulness. Almost as bad is the director's attempt to construct a visual style -- and, for that matter, characters -- by piling one mannerism on top of another.

| Jun 4, 2014

Besson has a gift for amoral sleaziness that should serve him well over here. In his very first American film, he has gone straight for the smarm.

| Jun 4, 2014

Mathilda is like no New York City girl-child I've ever seen riding the subway. And I couldn't take my eyes off her.

| Original Score: A- | Jul 6, 2010

Oozing style, wit and confidence from every sprocket, and offering a dizzyingly, fresh perspective on the Big Apple that only Besson could bring, this is, in a word, wonderful.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 26, 2007

A naive fairy tale splattered with blood.

Full Review | Sep 26, 2007

Ultimately seems at once too deranged and too mechanical.

| Sep 26, 2007

Besson fails to make much of New York's visual potential, and lazily asks that Leon's expertise be taken on trust. The shallowness was to be expected; the slackness is surprising.

| Feb 9, 2006

The Professional is much too sentimental to sound shockingly amoral in the least. Even in a finale of extravagant violence, it manages to be maudlin.

Full Review | Aug 30, 2004

While a wisp of a plot involving a crooked cop drives Lon from setpiece to setpiece, it's the central relationship between hitman Jean Reno and young charge Natalie Portman that makes the movie so memorable.

| Oct 30, 2001

Always at the back of my mind was the troubled thought that there was something wrong about placing a 12-year-old character in the middle of this action.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jan 1, 2000

One pretty awesome action movie.

| Jan 1, 2000

An altogether interesting take on an old story, one which Besson pulls off with his customary flair and panache.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 1, 2000

This is a Cuisinart of a movie, mixing familiar yet disparate ingredients, making something odd, possibly distasteful, undeniably arresting out of them.

| Jan 1, 2000