Luc Besson, action auteur
Part of The Prodigy‘s success comes from weaving violent action sequences with philosophical underpinnings. Luckily for fans, director William Kaufman is just the latest in a long line of directors to bring these disparate genres together. One of the best-known directors of this kind is Luc Besson, the French writer/director/producer. Since 1983, Luc Besson has worked on more than fifty different movies across a variety of languages. He’s also won a number of awards, including the Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Film Critics Prize, the Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film (Nil By Mouth) and the Best Director Cesar Award (The Fifth Element). Now seems as good a time as ever to look back at some of his highlights.Besson’s first film was Le Dernier Combat (1983), a black-and-white science-fiction film about a world in which people have almost completely lost the ability to speak. An unnamed man (Pierre Jolivet) makes his way through an apocalyptic landscape while being followed by The Brute (Jean Reno). The film is notable for being almost completely silent, with almost no dialogue and less than two minutes of music. Besson’s first hit, however, didn’t come until his second film, Subway (1985). A young man who has stolen some Mafia papers retreats into the subway, where he falls in love with a gangster’s wife and starts a band. Subway was the third most popular French movie of 1986.Nikita (1990) is one of Besson’s best known films, thanks to the stunning performance of Anne Parillaud as a junkie turned ruthless assassin. The film was remade in America as Point of No Return and two TV shows, La Femme Nikita in 1997 and Nikita in 2010. In 1994, Besson wrote and directed Leon, which starred Jean Reno as essentially the same character that he portrayed in a supporting role in Nikita. The film dealt with difficult moral issues such as revenge and corrupt police.Besson created the Taxi franchise in 1998, with sequels coming in 2000, 2003, and 2007, and an American remake in 2004. He also wrote and produced the Transporter series. In 2010, Besson released two films. The first is From Paris with Love, which he co-wrote and produced. Jonathan Rhys Meyers plays James Reese, an aide to the U.S. ambassador in France. He’s assigned as partner to loud-mouthed agent Charlie Wax, played by John Travolta. Together, the two uncover a terrorist plot, which Reese discovers reaches into his own personal life. Besson hopes to turn this title into a series as well.The other film is Les aventures extraordinaires d’Adele Blanc-Sec (The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec). Based on a French comic series, the film follows a feisty investigative journalist who is on the trail of a pterodactyl wreaking havoc in Paris in 1912. Trust us, it has to be seen to be believed. Besson will be returning to his assassin-film roots with 2011′s Colombiana, starring Zoe Saldana (Star Trek, Avatar) and Michael Vartan (TV’s Alias, HawthoRNe).