I just watched my nice DVD of Leon that I purcha­sed after watching the ori­gi­nal on my com­pu­ter. It’s sat on my shelf for a good 5 months, but today I deci­ded to watch it. I saw it with my friend and noted to myself that the film see­med to be mis­sing things and was shor­ter. My favou­rite sce­nes weren’t there either.

So I chec­ked it out on IMDB:
Run­time: 110 min / France:136 min (uncut ver­sion) / 133 min (Inter­na­tio­nal ver­sion)
On the back of my offi­cial UK DVD it sta­tes, “Run­time: 109 min”.

So I go through my Ame­ri­can ver­sion (which is 133 minu­tes long) quickly, skip­ping sce­nes to find out what they cut. To find out what 26 minu­tes of the movie they thought was legi­ti­mate to cut. If you haven’t seen the movie then don’t read the spoilers.

The sce­nes that were cut:
- When Matilda (port­man) learns how to become a hit­man, so all the sce­nes where she sticks bub­ble­gum on the doors of the peo­ple they’re killing and then tempts them to open, the scene where leon teaches her to hit a guy in the right pla­ces — chest and sto­mach, which she does with a paint­ball gun and then toasts the coke. Also some gun loa­ding sce­nes and the ring trick with the gre­nade.
- The scene where matilda tries to kill her­self rus­sian rou­lette style but Leon stops her
- The scene where they have a meal together and matilda laughs at leon really loudly after get­ting drunk on Cham­pagne.
- The scene where matilda dec­la­res her love to leon and he talks about why he cant have a girl­friend cause he shot his first gf when he was 19 and then the later moments about sha­ring the bed and the impli­ca­tions of sex. Also inc­lu­ding the part where she wore the dress Leon bought her.
- They cut the bit where leon and matilda go to see Tony (the guy that looks after the money) together.
- The scene where matilda is at home by her­self, pre­pa­ring to go into the police depart­ment to kill Oldman’s cha­rac­ter. She’s smo­king, clea­ning the house and the plant, drin­king milk, sit­ting outside, tal­king to some kids and giving them money to go away

They pretty much cut the middle half an hour of the movie, the bit that really dee­pens their rela­tionship and makes it more than just a casual shoo­ter action thri­ller. Without these moments, final parts don’t have their full affect and are not fully explai­ned. I’m ange­red so much by the extent of this cen­sorship — the com­mon theme seems to be “things a little girl should not be doing”, which is one of the pre­mi­ses for the movie in the first place. I’ve been rob­bed and want a refund. This will fore­ver scar a top ten movie of mine.