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I'm going with Leon: The Professional because - I swear - when I first saw this film in the early 1990s I came out saying: "Who the hell was that girl????" Young Natalie Portman showed a ton of star power in this role, when she was 13 years old. The start of an incredible career.
White knuckle action/suspense, crazy Gary Oldman, and the life and times of an earnest hit man.....Leon all the way. While I appreciate John Woo (I can't forgive him for Broken Arrow), and all he did to revolutionize action films, I agree with some of the other comments that the characters made Leon what it was. Any scene with Oldman (especially where one of the cops is waiting for him to leave the room/pointing the gun at whoever comes out the door - OR his "evvvvvvvvvvvvveryone" / talking to the bugs-classical music analogies) have stayed with me longer than Hard Boiled.
Hard Boiled is full of energy and the action is excellent. But Leon is not your typical gangster flick, it is all about character: the charm of Leon, the spitfire Portman and the bi-polar Gary Oldman. To's film is fuzzy to me, but I will never forget the people I met in Besson's classic.
Similar to Lance Davis' comments, It's very difficult to take the Professional seriously. Behind Oldman's histrionics, his squad of "police" look like they are at the top of the hackey sack division.
I genuinely like Leon, but this one is not even close. All it takes is a 3 minute long take action sequence for Woo to put Besson down for the count. Also, how can you vote against a film that has a protagonist named Inspector Tequila?
"Leon", no question. Besson's be strong film, Jean Reno's best film, Natalie Portman, so unbelievably brilliant at such a young age.
Gary Oldman is hilariously awful in Leon: The Professional. So over the top, he both makes and ruins every scene he's in. He's like a talented guitarist who solos over everybody else's parts because it's about him, not the song. Thing is, there's a very compelling movie here and it has nothing to do with Oldman. Leon the assassin is the conscience of the film, a paid assassin who eventually beds a 12-year-old girl. This could be handled very badly. And yet, it makes narrative sense and is totally true to both characters, so that it totally outweighs any moral panic. It's sweetly sociopathic, a relationship that began by convenience and necessity, but evolved in a believable way to become the heart of the movie. All of that is way more interesting than Oldman's bloated hysterics.