“You can never go home again, Oatman. But I guess you can shop there.”

Too many quotes I could’ve begun with here – but that one’s as good as any. Check them out – just a great screenplay.

A slight diversion from the horror due to disk space being required on the Sky+ box, not to mention the last batch being frankly rubbish, lol. I recorded this last week and only just realised as it began … 10 YEARS, man! lol. Amazing how time flies, and amazing how good this movie still looks and feels.

Midway through the movie, I realised, sure I was enjoying it but it did feel like something was missing – call it a combination of the age of the thing and the fact that it’s one of those movies I watched way too much at the time and which brings back lots of confusing pesky me things, lol. But it’s amazing once we get to the reunion itself at the end, how the mood changes – anchored on that shot of John Cusack looking up at Minnie Driver from feeding the baby with a bottle. Yes, that whole scene is too cute for words – but that shot in particular, the look on his face, is just incredible. Likewise, the soundtrack – which is one of the best ever – is great throughout, but it’s in that last 30 minutes that it just soars. The “Live and Let Die” moment early in the movie is genius (Shrek the Third take note, this is where that song belongs) – but “99 Luftballons” at the end is up there with the absolute great soundtrack moments, floating in as it does over Minnie Driver’s wrecked expression.

This is just one of those perfect movies – if it weren’t for the fact my old DVD was a barebones release, I’d be kicking myself for getting rid of it because it is one to watch on a yearly basis if not even more frequently. It’s a real shame nobody had the mind to put together a 10th anniversary collector’s DVD. Roll on 2012? 17? lol.

I tried writing one review of this already and it ended up being all over the place. The problem I have with this movie is, it’s among a small cluster of movies that I watched almost repeatedly when I was first falling in love with the movies. Apart from the extra footage that’s in this longer version, which still catches me off guard, I practically know the movie by heart. It’s impossible for me to make a fresh judgment of the movie – it’s either an embarassing reminder of my youth, or simply, awesome.

I completely advise watching the longer version because, though the extra scenes are not essential to the story (it was a favourite movie long before I had access to the long version), once you’ve seen those scenes, you just can’t forget them. They deepen the relationship between Léon and Mathilda and I’d honestly say it’s a better handling of this kind of relationship than either of the Lolita movie adaptations or any of its clones.

This is a highly stylised movie – even New York looks strange, it’s only Central Park that truly gives away the location. The costumes are particularly stylised and probably it’s the costumes that make a lot of people even more uncomfortable with Natalie Portman’s character/performance. The fact is, she is sexy as hell in this movie, and she’s meant to be. Our connection to Léon practically depends on this point – we feel his discomfort when she dances dressed as Madonna and Marilyn Monroe… the point is to question how far a friendship of this sort should go, and as far as the movie is concerned, the one line that should not be crossed is sex, pure and simple. I actually seriously wonder if this movie would be made today, especially the long version in which Léon clearly shares a bed with Mathilda – I mean, isn’t this just what Michael Jackson’s under fire for right now? Like Mathilda says, “It’s a great game… it makes you think...”

Writing something along the lines of that last paragraph is what has held me up writing this review – ‘cos like everyone else these days, I feel like I’m going to be shot in the head if I even suggest we should remove the barriers of fear we’ve put up as far as young people and “beauty” goes. That’s all I can really say in a short review but I think there’s a lot of discussion to be done on the subject … somebody actually should make a movie like this again before children are completely outlawed and forced to grow up in seclusion with electrostatic shields or something.

I think this is a great movie… I certainly love watching it. But it could just be the combo of the old memories of watching it when I myself was underage, and the current issues I see in it.