10 Awesome Action Movies That Didn't Need A Sequel, Remake Or Reboot

7. Leon: The Professional

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Gaumont Buena Vista International

Not only is Leon one of the best action movies of the 1990s, it also turned out to be one of the most important in retrospect. It saw Luc Besson get his foot firmly in the Hollywood door for better or worse, marked the feature debut of one of her generation's most acclaimed actresses in Natalie Portman, while Gary Oldman's scenery-inhaling performance as antagonist Norman Stansfield saw him spawn a thousand memes and establish a reputation as one of the genre's all-time great villains.

Besson had originally planned on making a sequel, and even wrote a script titled Mathilda with an eye to shooting it once Portman had aged into the role, but after the filmmaker formed his own production company he was unable to secure the rights to the characters.

However, some of the elements that The Fifth Element director had planned to incorporate into Mathilda eventually found their way into Zoe Saldana's Colombiana, which quickly came and went to little fanfare back in 2011. In the end, one of EuropaCorp's dime-a-dozen B-level action movies was still a better option than risking tarnishing the legacy of The Professional.

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