The Movie: Leon is the extended, international version of The Professional which includes 24 minutes of extra footage that was cut from the U.S. release of the film, much of it considered too "racy" for American audiences. Actually, it's not really racy, it's just maybe touching a little too close to pedophile themes than puritanical American society would stand for, but truth be told, the whole thing just makes a lot more sense when you actually get to see the film the way the rest of the world saw it.

In short, the movie is about a girl whose family was killed by crooked cops, and her neighbor -- a professional hitman -- who takes her in and protects her. She wants to learn his trade so that she can get revenge against the men who killed her family. It's got tons of action, tons of great drama, and an intensity that I haven't seen in a film for quite some time.

The young Natalie Portman puts out what is in my opinion, her best performance out of all of her movies, although perhaps this film gave her a wide range of complex emotions to convey, probably more so than any thing else she has worked on since.

If you haven't seen this movie yet, I highly recommend it, and I highly recommend seeing this uncut version of it. This isn't some "director's cut" that had a bunch of stuff we weren't supposed to see added back in. This is the version of the film that was made for the world outside of the United States. But yeah, check it out!

The DVD: This DVD release, though I'm glad it includes the uncut version of the movie, isn't all that hot in terms of DVD production. The video transfer showed some crushed blacks, and some strange ringing or fringing from edge enhancement processing, as well as some minor compression artifacts. The audio proved rather bland and unremarkable, but functional at least. And special features were almost nonexistent, with a trailer, some international marketing posters, and an isolated score, along with the usual text "talent files".

It's a pretty mediocre DVD for a really great movie, but have no fear, September 2003 brings us a "SuperBit" release of this uncut version of the film which I'm sure will at least address the bland video and audio quality.