Monday, May 18, 2015

The Review: Payback & Leon: The Professional

I watched the Mel Gibson movie Payback. I hadn't seen this in a while, like, the early 2000's and it came out in 1999. Its a pretty basic premise about a guy named Porter that gets double-crossed by his partner in crime and his wife. He gets shot in the back twice but ends up surviving and coming back for revenge. This movie was violent as hell and had some great villains. 

Gregg Henry who plays his dirty ass former partner plays the jerk pretty well and I wish I could have seen a movie where the two of them do jobs together before the betrayal. 

There seems to be a lot of back story that feels missing within the relationships but its still a good movie. Yeah, I'm fully aware of Gibson's reputation now but it doesn't take from the fact that he made some cool ass movies back in the day. I also managed to watch another movie I hadn't seen in a minute.

Leon: The Professional is still one of the best movies ever. This came out in 1994 when Natalie Portman was only 12 years old. Jean Reno plays Leon who is a hitman. He is pretty quiet and minds his own business when he isn't killing fools Batman style moving trough the shadows. 

Portman plays Mathilda who is a smart ass cursing, smoking little girl living with her shitty father who ends up killed by Gary Oldman and his men. Whenever Oldman is on screen he is terrifying. He pops these pills, cracks his neck, and bad things happen. 

Portman's performance is so good that even though she is huge now as a star I imagined she would be even bigger. Leon is such an innocent seeming guy in this with Mathilda seeming like the adult between the two of them. Over 20 years later this is still one of my favorite movies. Te acting, directing, story, and music all came together perfectly.

Click here for previous The Review.

No comments: