The New York Times ' Janet Maslin wrote, " The Professional is much too sentimental to sound shockingly amoral in the least. Léon and Mathilda form an unusual relationship, as she becomes his protégée and learns the hitman's trade. The image quality of this Blu-ray is astounding, and if the audio glitch is confined to the check disc, then this is another must own release.

When Léon is out on a job, Mathilda fills a bag with guns from Léon's collection and sets out to kill Stansfield. For those not familiar with Leon, the basic crux of the matter centres on clinical hitman Leon (Reno) and young Mathilda (Portman).

Maïwenn, Luc Besson's sixteen year old wife at the time of filming, says the film was inspired by their relationship.

However, in the meantime, Besson left Gaumont Film Company to start his own movie studio, EuropaCorp.

I had an issue with my check disc in that the Director’s Cut drops out of sync between 85:03 and 88:22.

The majority of said footage further shines the spotlight on the moments shared by Leon and Mathilda, which adds a few nice touches to the overall narrative of Leon.As for the director’s cut element of this Leon release, this is the same director’s cut first seen in 2004 that adds 23 minutes of footage to the movie. Mathilda's abusive father attracts the ire of corrupt DEA agents, who have been paying him to stash cocaine in his apartment. It’s the character of Stansfield that poses a far greater threat, the corrupt DEA agent that is responsible for the deaths of Mathilda’s family. Richard Schickel of Time magazine lauded the film, writing, "this is a Cuisinart of a movie, mixing familiar yet disparate ingredients, making something odd, possibly distasteful, undeniably arresting out of them".