Leon, a.k.a., The Professional (1994) and The Fifth Element (1997)

Director Luc Besson was ambitious during the 1990s, hot off his French hit “La Femme Nikita,” about a troubled woman trained to become an assassin back when such ideas were, “Whoa, who woulda thunk?” (Recall, this was long before the silly “Lucy.”

“Leon” –- known in the U.S. as “The Professional” –- offers a spin on that as a 12-year-old NYC girl (Natalie Portma, in her debut) is taken in by a hitman (Jean Reno) after her uncaring, vile family is murdered by DEA thugs. She mourns only her toddler brother. Gary Oldman is the head DEA agent, an evil freak who pops Quaaludes like chocolate. Young Matoilda wants to learn the assassin trade to kill Oldman and his badged thugs. Leon reluctantly agrees. But Matilda is troubled as she mistakes adoration for a fatherly figure for sexual attraction. In a huge misstep, Besson introduces this dynamic and then runs away from it. He opts for massive, very artsy gunplay instead, and it is wildly entertaining, the entire long climax involving Leon and every cop in the city. My college pals all loved the film, but I still find it a bit too loose for its own good. Oldman’s cop is far more amusing than dangerous. Put this guy up against any Joe Pesci character from the era, he’d fold like pancake batter. Reno has never been better. And I knew back then Portman was something to behold: Tragic, funny, confused, angry; she amazes. B

 “Fifth Element” gleefully torches any set standard. Oldman returns as the villain, doing a twisted take on -– I gather -– Marvin the Martian as an arms dealer out to steal precious alien stones that could save Earth from annihilation. Oldman’s Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg (awesome name!) insists he’ll make money off the ensuing chaos. A Republican? No matter. He’s up against Bruce Willis as Korben Dallas, ex-soldier turned cab driver in 23rd century Brooklyn. By winking coincidence, Korben has stumbled on Earth’s new savior, a fiery ginger head named Leeloo (Milla Jovovich). Part action/comedy, “Firth” is a love letter to “Star Wars” and “Blade Runner” -– both made when Besson was a teen. He spills references -- Leia hair buns, a familiar brown robe, and Brion James (RIP) – so fast, they fly by. “Fifth” also is a must for oddball film score buffs, thank you, Eric Serra. The best joke: Willis’ hero and Oldman’s villain never meet, separated by the most (purposefully) contrived circumstances. VIP is Chris Tucker as an androgynous DJ who ends up narrating the action. Some found his Ruby Rhod a disaster, I love the WTF attitude of him (her?). A-

The Game (1997)

David Fincher’s red-herring thriller “The Game” failed with most mainstream critics. I loved it. I just saw a different movie. “Game” is a deceitful movie about the deceit of movie-making, the Hollywood button-pushing that we know is fiction, but that we get sucked up into: Drama, action, comedy. The edits, camera angles, lights, sound effects: We know it’s fake, but we buy in bulk. We get involved. The plot: Michael Douglas is soul-dead San Fran multimillionaire Nicholas Van Orton who accepts a “gift” from his baby brother (Sean Penn), a vacation that comes to him at home and office, a personalized attack that crushes and removes every instinct Nic has built, bought, and forged, starting with a TV with its own mind and running past a crashed cab in deep water. The plot is preposterous, of course, but it’s on purposefully so, this beautiful nasty meta-film of a film stars a man who has bought into his own Hollywood thriller by choice, we the audience running with him. By choice. Douglas -– the symbol of amoral America during the 1980s –– is perfectly cast as a vastly unlikable man who we root for quickly. We are him. A

Event Horizon (1997)

I saw “Event Horizon” back in 1997 and thought it an ugly, silly mess with good actors – Sam Neill and Laurence Fishburne star – mucking about in a spaceship so familiar one keeps waiting for John Hurt to lose his lunch. (Hurt does not appear.) The plot: Neill is a scientist leading the salvage of the spacecraft Event Horizon that went missing seven years prior with no clear explanation. The ship appears as if every ’80s slasher villain has run through it: Blood smears and grisly bodies abound, floating in micro-gravity. Why? How? I won’t spoil it. Naturally, though, the crew ditch the buddy system and split up because in 2047 no one has seen “Alien.” Made by Paul Anderson (not Thomas, but W.S.), “Event” smacks of a film that’s dead certain that pouring on guts, gore, eyeballs, and blood all means horror and scares, not aware that the opposite is true. The paces Neill is put through makeup-wise brings my truest pity. The scenes with men holding on by fingers to bending, twisting iron brought my continuous, unpitying laughter. Time has not been kind at all. D

Beverly Hills Ninja (1997)

Chris Farley as a ninja. No one can hate on that. It’s too deliciously ludicrous. And yet 1997 gave us just that, “Beverly Hills Ninja,” with the “SNL” comic whirlwind as a clumsy white guy raised in a Japanese ninja commune who visits … well, you know. Look, it’s negative IQ dumb and smells of an alcohol (or worse) induced joke come alive, but there’s a what-the-hell fun zeal to it as Farley stumbles, falls and generally acts like a buffoon. He did that well. I heartily laughed at the bits where characters fly to a transcendental hand-drawn cartoon world to chat philosophy, and at a running gag with our fearless warrior losing his shoes. Farley had an unquenchable appetite for drugs, and yet he always came off as a big kid with a kind heart, even in his worst films. A trace of sadness lingers, but I laughed. C+

Men in Black (1997)

I love “Men in Black.” To think it once was going to star Clint Eastwood and Chris O’Donnell. Thank God for Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith. Jones is K, an agent for a secret government organization that is like Department of Immigration for outer space arrivals. K’s mission: Keep the aliens a secret from us human saps. Smith is J, a plains clothes street cop who ends up working for K. The plot has Smith as a surrogate “us,” seeing a whacky world that’s been all around us, but just out of sight until now. Our Men in Black have to stop the world from going asunder, and their enemy is a bug-infested famer whose body was smashed flat so he drags himself around with tics and hiccups. He’s played by Vincent D’Onofrio in an endlessly funny and Oscar-worthy performance. Director Barry Sonnenfeld makes the talking dogs, one-liners and the climactic joke about the N.Y. fair grounds seem effortless and perfectly sensible. Rick Baker designed the unique aliens. Smith and Jones -- I love their surnames here -- play like a father-and-son comedy team, having a blast. Even Jones smiles. A

Fierce Creatures (1997)

From the makers of wickedly-dark British crime satire “A Fish Called Wanda” – one of my favorites – comes “Fierce Creatures,” a surprisingly tame comedy despite the title. The entire cast of “Wanda” returns for this not-quite sequel, behind and in front of the camera. John Cleese plays the button-down ex-cop suddenly put in charge of a financially strapped zoo, purchased by a Murdoch-type corporate clown (Kevin Kline) with an obnoxious sex-obsessed son (Kline, again). As Wanda, sorry Willa, Jamie Lee Curtis is the smart, go-getter stuck in the middle, falling for Cleese, but tied to Kline’s weasel. It’s all the same, with gags repeated from not just “Wanda,” but Monty Python as well. (“It’s just a flesh wound!”) I constantly felt reminded of a far-better film I could easily re-watch, and a comedy troupe that will never be topped. Fierce? No. C+

1997: Best and Worst

The Best
1. L.A. Confidential
2. The Sweet Hereafter
3. Boogie Nights
4. Titanic
5. The Apostle
6. The Game
7. (Tie) Men in Black and Dark City
8. Donnie Brosco
9. In the Company of Men
10. Insomnia



The Worst
5. She's So Lovely
4. Hoodlum
3. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
2. Speed 2: Cruise Control
1. (Tie) Batman & Robin and Spawn

The Sweet Hereafter (1997)

“The Sweet Hereafter” does what fellow 1997 release “Titanic” could not, tell a story of mass death, an incident in the cold that leads to drowning of scores, and leave the viewer reeling. A blubbery mess. Here, Ian Holm plays Mitchell Stephens, an attorney who launches a lawsuit against the unknown “creators” of a highway-lake school bus incident that has killed nearly every child in an upper state New York burg. (There is no such thing as an accident, he says.) The lawyer sets out to find a “pure” family to lead his civil suit, but, of course, no such group exists. And Stephens has his own buried raging demons: His daughter is a drug-addicted waif with HIV. Written and directed by Atom Egoyan (“Exotica”), the film defines heartbreaking as it lays out the coldest of fact during a tragedy – sometimes there is no purpose, there is only pain. Holm should have won an Oscar for his role, a career defining act. Only one scene is wrong: A sickly twisted father-daughter incest tryst in a barn loft, filled with candles. Too much. A