Title: Léon: The Professional
Content:  Léon: The Professional was released in France on 14 September 1994. The film was a commercial success, grossing over $45 million worldwide on a $16 million budget. It grossed 26.8 million French Franc ($5.1 million) in its opening week in France and was number one for three weeks. In France, it sold 3,330,703 tickets in total.
Title: Léon: The Professional
Content:  Léon: The Professional (Léon), titled Leon in the UK and Australia (and originally titled The Professional in the US), is a 1994 English-language French action-thriller film  written and directed by Luc Besson. It stars Jean Reno and Gary Oldman, and features the film debut of Natalie Portman. The plot follows Léon (Reno), a professional hitman, who reluctantly takes in twelve-year-old Mathilda (Portman) after her family is murdered by corrupt Drug Enforcement Administration agent Norman Stansfield (Oldman). Léon and Mathilda form an unusual relationship, as she becomes his protégée and learns the hitman's trade.
Title: Léon: The Professional
Content:   Léon: The Professional is to some extent an expansion of an idea in Besson's earlier 1990 film, La Femme Nikita (in some countries Nikita). In La Femme Nikita, Jean Reno plays a similar character named Victor. Besson described Léon as "Now maybe Jean is playing the American cousin of Victor. This time he's more human." While most of the interior footage was shot in France, the rest of the film was shot on location in New York City. The final scene at school was filmed at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey.
Title: Léon: The Professional
Content:  this is, in a word, wonderful". Mark Deming at AllMovie awarded the film four stars out of five, describing it as "As visually stylish as it is graphically violent", and featuring "a strong performance from Jean Reno, a striking debut by Natalie Portman, and a love-it-or-hate-it, over-the-top turn by Gary Oldman". 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". He praised Oldman's performance as "divinely psychotic". Roger Ebert awarded the film two-and-a-half stars out of four, writing: "It is a well-directed film, because Besson has a natural gift for plunging into drama 
Title: The Professional (1981 film)
Content:  The Professional (original title: Le Professionnel; ) is a 1981 French action thriller film directed by Georges Lautner. The film stars Jean-Paul Belmondo as the title role. The film is based on award-winning 1976 novel Death of a Thin-Skinned Animal by Patrick Alexander. The film was a commercial success upon its theatrical release and was the fourth most watched feature film in France in 1981 behind La Chèvre, Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Fox and the Hound, selling 5,243,559 tickets. The music was composed by Ennio Morricone and the main theme "Chi Mai" became an instrumental hit.
Title: Léon: The Professional
Content:  Besson wrote a script for a sequel, Mathilda, but filming was delayed until Portman was older. In the script, Mathilda was described as "older" and "more mature", and was working as a cleaner. However, in the meantime, Besson left Gaumont Film Company to start his own movie studio, EuropaCorp. Unhappy at Besson's departure, Gaumont Film Company "has held The Professional rights close to the vest – and will not budge". In 2011, director Olivier Megaton told reporters that he and Besson used the script for Mathilda as the basis for Colombiana, a film about a young cleaner played by Zoe Saldana. Like Mathilda, her character goes to war with a drug cartel as revenge for the murder of her family when she was a child.
Title: Léon: The Professional
Content:  There is also an extended version of the film, referred to as "international version", "version longue", or "version intégrale". Containing 25 minutes of additional footage, it is sometimes called the "Director's Cut" but Besson refers to the original version as the Director's Cut and the new version as "The Long Version". According to Besson, this is the version he wanted to release, but for the fact that the extra scenes tested poorly with Los Angeles preview audiences. The additional material is found in the film's second act, and it depicts more of the interactions and relationship between Léon and Mathilda, as well as explicitly demonstrating how Mathilda accompanies Léon on several of his hits as "a full co-conspirator", to further her training as a contracted killer.
Title: Léon: The Professional
Content:  In the 2013 book, Poseur: A Memoir of Downtown New York City in the '90s, Marc Spitz wrote that the film is "considered a cult classic". In 2014, Time Out polled several film critics, directors, actors and stunt actors to list their top action films; Léon: The Professional was listed at No. 42. The character Norman Stansfield has since been named as one of cinema's greatest villains. The English band Alt-J released a song about the film, titled "Matilda" [sic]. The first line in the lyrics, "this is from Matilda", refer to Léon's last words to Stansfield, shortly before the grenades detonate and kills them. South Korean comedian Park Myeong-su and singer-songwriter IU released and performed a song inspired by the film, "Leon", for a bi-annual music festival of South Korea's highly popular variety show, Infinite Challenge, in 2015.
Title: Bichhoo
Content:  Bichoo is similar to the 1994 English-language French action thriller film Léon: The Professional, written and directed by Luc Besson. Léon: The Professional stars Jean Reno as the titular mob hitman; Gary Oldman as corrupt and unhinged DEA agent Norman Stansfield; a young Natalie Portman, in her feature film debut, as Mathilda, a 12-year-old girl who is reluctantly taken in by Léon after her family is murdered; and Danny Aiello as Tony, the mobster who gives the hitman his assignments. Léon and Mathilda form an unusual relationship, as she becomes his protégée and learns the hitman's trade. A notable difference is that Mathilda is 12 years old and Kiran about 10 years older.
Title: The Professional (2003 film)
Content: Branislav Lečić as Teodor "Teja" Kraj ; Bora Todorović as Luka Laban ; Nataša Ninković as Marta ; Dragan Jovanović as Gipsani ; Josif Tatić as Maki ; Miodrag Krstović as Jovan ; Gorica Popović as a journalist ; Renata Ulmanski as Teja's mother ; Stole Novaković as Teja's father ; Dana Todorović as Ana ; Aljoša Vučković as a waiter ; Sergej Trifunović as Marta's violent ex-boyfriend  Branislav Lečić was intentionally chosen to play the role of Teodor "Teja" Kraj because he actively participated in overthrowing the Milošević regime. Actual footage from the 1991 protests showing Lečić giving his speech was used in the film.

Question: Who was the director of Léon: The Professional?
Answer: Luc Besson.
Luc Paul Maurice Besson.