Leon, professional hit-man, holds a knife to an American thug’s fat neck and then pulls out a cell phone and dials up his emloyer. The employer then gargles some standard made-for-cable lines into the thug’s ear and then tells Leon, ‘Make sure he understands, then let him go.’ Leon pauses, then says in authentic French-accent, ‘Do you understand?’ This is a beautiful, awkward moment as the two worlds make a genuine effort to communicate with each other. Those worlds being that of arty French director and American genre flick, that genre being action-thriller (e.g. Lethal Weapon or even The Fugitive). Leon represents the arty French director, Luc Besson, while the fat thug represents us, the American moviegoer. He is holding a knife to our neck and saying, ‘Do you understand-how this film will be different?’ Of course, we’ll say yes. We’ll say anything at this point, but let’s hope we really do and it really is.

It’s not—sadly, because Leon is such a wonderful character. The actor, Jean something, could have been the child of Sly Stallone and Vlade Divac, with his father’s cool countenance and his father’s deep-set eyes and vacant stare. He was six feet tall, and I loved him. Gary Oldman was, of course, excellent as the psycho villain. But the film tries for Amelie, but it just comes out as sap. And when it’s not doing that, it’s trying to be The Last Boyscout, but instead we get a more arty Jean Claude Van Damme flick, complete with poor dialogue and perhaps one or thirty explosions too many. This is a rental.