The Professional vs. La Femme Nikita

smatticus

on 6/29/2012

I'm amazed this matchup hasn't appeared yet, considering that they both have the same director and the same lead effectively playing the same character (although Victor in Nikita was a cold, calculating psychopath while Leon was much more benign, better developed but a little more dense, but they are both assassins with similar fashion sense played by Jean Reno, and Luc Besson has admitted a possible connection in the narrative, so go figure). Anyway, I love both films, and got round to watching Leon fairly recently, but I think I prefer Nikita because it was one of the first foreign language movies I watched and truly appreciated. I had seen other films like Crouching TIger Hidden Dragon, and the Jean de Floret/Manon de Source duo (the latter of which I particularly enjoyed), but I did not especially care for them as much as Nikita. Leon (The Professional) is still very cool and incredibly fun to watch, with some great performances from Jean Reno and Gary Oldman (and of course it brought Natalie Portman to the world, and I have a lot more respect for her now that I have seen this and Black Swan), but the style and feel of Nikita knows no boundaries in terms of coolness, and Leon does occasionally feel rather pantomime, which kind of annoyed me the first time. Anyway, both are great, but I'm going to give this one to Nikita.