Well well. Luc Besson takes on John Cassavetes for the first time in this pastiche (for the first half, anyway) of Gloria. Jean Reno is an illiterate Italian (? it's not totally clear, but this is how he's referred to) hit-man in his 40s in New York, a simpleton with no friends other than his plant, an assassin of inordinate skill (though we see no real evidence of this until the very end of the film) who takes in an orphaned Natalie Portman, a pre-teen when this was filmed but dressing like a hooker through most of the film, eventually agreeing to teach her the assassin's art so she can revenge herself upon the killer of her horrible family, Gary Oldman as an insane, dirty-cop drug-addict DEA officer. Got it? Yeah, I got it, it wasn't hard to figure out....though none of it made any sense, ever. There are a few reviews of this film that have suggested that it be looked at as existing in sort of a fantasy world, and that would seem to be a better way of looking at it. Not much makes sense if looked at in real-world terms, even less sense than in usual in a violent action movie; but the film doesn't seem to have any internal logic. Reno is the hit-man to end all hit men despite being an illiterate simpleton? Oldman is some fairly high-level cop despite being so obviously, categorically insane? There never seem to be any extras around in most of the indoor scenes; there's a whole 5-minute scene in a washroom between Oldman and Portman and nobody intrudes. None of this works in a film that ostensibly takes place in a real New York City Let's talk about the acting. Though I didn't think Reno's character made any sense, I rather liked him, I got taken in by his charm; Oldman on the other hand played a complete cartoon character. Did he play him well? Perhaps. I don't know. Was he supposed to be a cartoon? Did Besson think this was a cool idea? I guess so. It didn't work for me, at all. It was awful. And Portman; I'm not going to necessarily argue that her performance was bad, I'll give a 12-year-old the benefit of the doubt when playing a character that has to alternate between cutesy, slutty, and determined; but again, I didn't buy the person she was supposed to be. And although at the end the film never....quite....indulges in the pedophilic fantasies that it seems to be heading towards, it still comes to close for comfort. Portman wears skimpy outfits throughout, and the camera pays more attention to her ass than is probably necessary. Were this my first Luc Besson film, I might have given him a bit of a pass, but given his usual predilection for waifish, very young model types...ewww.
The ending is sentimental, trite, and completely unbelievable. It's an extension of the film as a whole, which probably doesn't even deserve the 3/10 I'll give it.