Analysis of openings of Thriller films - Leon.

Film - Leon

Year - 1994

Director - Luc Besson

The director opens Leon, by using a wide tracking shot of the city, firstly you see a mass of trees then it zooms closer to the skyscrapers,this shows the diversity between city and country, the director zooms close up to a sign that says `Little Italy` when they get into the city, which implicates that perhaps The director uses an extreme close up of the two gangsters at the table. The director uses a wide variety of shots, which creates diversity.

The director creates suspense very well, by using false alarms leading up to the real things, for instance when they use a dummy model in the lift, so the enemies will shot it thikning it is a real person. Leon is set in America in `Little Italy`. The music that has been used; Drums and kettle drums, create a build up to the event and creates suspense and tension. The music is stopped suddenly when the officer has a knife held to his throat. The officer is portrayed with this tough guy exterior when actually we can see how scared he really is.

The director used one particular shot of all the bullet holes in the blackout blind, which created spots of lights from the holes in the blind, this showed the transistion from dark to light, this could also represent how people can change from bad (dark) to good (light).

The conventions of Thriller films that are shown in Leon are; the accents,dark glasses,guns,knifes,through the key hole shots, prostitue and trap doors.

Another convention of Thriller films is spiral staircases becuase although you can hear who is coming up or down them, you can not see around them, these are most commonly used in chase and murder scenes, it is used in Leon in the chase scene and also when we are introduced to the girl.