Change Your Image
LucLonde
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
Man of Tai Chi (2013)
Good to see Reeves stretch out a bit.
As much as I hate to badmouth people for things I'm truly no good at, Keanu Reeves has never struck me as the most gifted actor, often mistaken for some wooden plank filling the leading role as some poor, underpaid stage hand wheels him around to his marks. I don't remember him ever playing a bad guy before, but in Man of Tai Chi (which he also directed), he seems to have found what he needed to make me forget that he's...well...Keanu Reeves. I have to wonder if he'd be more revered today if he started playing villains earlier in his career. Or maybe it's that directors have always held him back, failing to channel whatever it is that truly keeps studios doling out bajillions to Bill.
Léon (1994)
This set the bar for me as a kid as far as film making goes.
I remember seeing this when I was 15 and thinking that it contained just about everything one could want in a film. I've since noticed a father/daughter motif in Luc Besson's films, probably most notably in Leon II: Wasabe.
It's about how the austere and stoic male archetype can be floored by a small and powerless child. It shows a cold-blooded killer finding his heart, finding it more desirable than the killing and hiding. Now that I think of it, even the 5th Element follows this to some extent. I'm a huge Luc Besson fan in large part due to this recurring theme. You hope your favorite band never changes genres and keep going back to their music because they stuck with their style. Besson is that band.