First up, full disclosure, I am likely a modestly distant relative of Sting. His proper surname is Sumner. Mums Surname was Sumner. (No, that’s not enough. It just means Summoner Before The Crown… there were a lot of them.. Though I do feel an inexplicable duty to HM Queen Eliz…) My sister traced back some ancestry and there’s a LOT of George Sumners in our line and in the line of Sting to about the point where they are both next to … one guy who I’m not going to name so folks don’t go searching… But the bottom line is that we’re likely cousins a few times removed.
Why mention that? ‘Cause he does this song, and I love it, and it might matter to crazy people if I didn’t disclose that there might be this hypothetical connection. The reality is that he looks a LOT like my uncle, George Sumner, and I like his music. Other than that, he’s never heard of me and we’ve not got a thing going on. But “full disclosure”, so done.
This movie snippet is one I saw a decade+ ago. I don’t remember the title. It’s a GREAT movie. I think I first saw it in French. (Likely with subtitles). I’m not sure. It is a French movie. I lose track of what language I saw / heard / read something in. Did I mention it is a great movie?
The basic plot is that Leon is a Hit Man. Sort of fell into the profession of necessity. He’s good at it, in a sort of “someone has to do it” sort of way. I can relate. A LOT of I.T. crap is “someone has to do it” sort of way… (Paged in panic, Executive “I just hit send, can you delete that email?”… at the time you could, and I did. Now not so much… Another executive Butt Wipe accomplished…) I could see me wiping all sorts of Executive Butts…
So Leon comes home one day and The Waif is in the hallway. The Waif is daughter of a woman of “modest” repute. He comforts her. (Kind hearted hit man, yeah, that would be me…) Time passes. There’s some “bad shit” goes down on Waif’s Mom and Waif goes to Hitman’s door hoping against all odds to be let in so as not to be part of The Shit. Leon lets her in (as would I) and becomes Rescuer. (Oh how I’m prone to being Rescuer…)
A lot unfolds, and NO I’ll not tell you the ending. Go watch the movie. It is very much worth it. Let’s just say that there is a police invasion and shootout at the end….
Along the way Leon teaches Waif the way of the assassin for hire… She’s a fast study and he’s smitten. Yet he restrains himself. So here’s a hit man with free pedophilia access wracked with emotions AND morality… Did I mention this is a French film?… and a good one? ;-) and he does the right and moral thing. Yeah, hit man and hero…. (Did I mention I can see me as Leon?…)
In any case, that’s the set up. Here’s the song.
Play it twice. Maybe 3 times. Find the movie (whatever the title was…)
I know beyond a doubt that were I Leon, I’d do exactly what he did. I’d love. I’d restrain. I’d protect. And I’d do everything for the one who needs it…
Ah, UPDATE: I found the movie. “Leon, the Professional”:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110413/
Mathilda, a 12-year-old girl, is reluctantly taken in by Léon, a professional assassin, after her family is murdered. Léon and Mathilda form an unusual relationship, as she becomes his protégée and learns the assassin’s trade.
Seems it has a YouTube Fan Channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzbjR_k7iL95Fm2C-XFSMVg
UPDATE 2:
Hey, it has a wiki. Who knew… (Spoiler Alert: I has the plot in it…)
Musings from the Chiefio 
@EM: when you say ‘a few times removed’ you add unnecessary complexity to the calculation, IMO.
If you are actually cousins, the determinant is the ancestor(s) you share. A simple way to remember… when you say ‘grandparent’ or ‘great grandparent’… count the number of times a ‘G’ shows up in your lineage. For example, if the ancestor is your grandparent, 1 G means first cousin. If a great-great grandparent, 3 Gs mean 3rd cousin.
Now, to determine the ‘removed’, the calculation is performed from both lineages.. yours and the cousin’s. If they match, with same count of Gs, re is no ‘removed’ needed. If, however, there is A diifferent number of Gs, as when the cousin is the parent or child of the person with the number of Gs you have, then the ‘removal’ is the difference in the count of Gs, which really are the Generations between the persons being compared, and their shared ancestor(s).
To be sure, diagram the generations. If you and Sting are in the same generation, en no ‘removed is needed. If you are in different generations, then find the generations whch match, (same number of (Gs), and then count down to you or the other person who is in a later generation. Each extra generation is a ‘removed’.
I hope this helps.
I liked that movie too, E.M. I’ve watched it 3 times that I can recall.
I’ll be damned, I’ve seen that movie twice myself, in French, captioned English and once in English. Worth watching…pg
p.g.: “Worth watching…”
Agreed +++. It is not the usual formulaic Hollywood movie and it holds your interest. Must be the French director.
Good acting, particularly from such a young girl. You get sucked in by the characters and the story. That doesn’t happen much nowadays.
Lessee… 1994… Yeah, they still made some good movies then. Not so much in recent years.
I’m going to see if it’s floating around somewhere. Mrs. H.R. liked it too and I wouldn’t have to twist her arm to watch it again.
@Steven Fraser:
Unfortunately, I didn’t pay that much attention when my Sister was “enlightening me” with the whole thing… so I can’t say how many discrepant generations there might be… they my “few times”. I just figured “well, the odds of it being an exact match from about 1700? are pretty slim”. Though frankly, I also don’t remember exactly what century it was that Sis said our Sumner was near / in the same county / city as his Sumner… What can I say. It was a holiday family get together and I was much more interested in the wine than in my Sisters obsession with genealogy… Even if we ARE 4th or 5th or whatever cousins, it isn’t like Sting is going to show up and ask me to visit the local pubs with him. So what’s the point?
So I remembered the part that mattered to me. “I might be a very distant relative of Sting, but so far distant as to be at best a curiosity.” Thus my fuzzy phrasing.
@H.R. & P.G.:
A quick search on the Roku didn’t turn it up. We have Netflix and Prime so that implies not on them either (as it points to channels that have a title). I couldn’t type the accent on Leon, so that still gives some hope, but a search on just “The Professional” still didn’t find it.
If anyone finds it somewhere, I’m interested…
A search on youtube shows they have it, but “starts at $9.99″… on their ppv movies section. For that, I’ll buy a DVD.
But that does imply Google has the rights to it at present so blocking others (usually the major channel providers get exclusivity for some long period of time, then move on…) So maybe in a few more years it will be on some other provider…
Sting also starred in a 2-part BBC radio dramatisation of Mervyn Peake’s “Gormenghast” trilogy, playing Steerpike, the central character who contributes more than his fair share of the gloriously dark, looming menace which pervades the work. (Wiki on Gormenghast is here.) It is with shock that I find from the interweb that it dates back to 1984, but it is worth looking for – I remember it all these years later.
So radio dramatisation…. not going to be in video then…. Wonder if they have an online version…
Ah, my bad, this says it is a TV series:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gormenghast_%28TV_serial%29
and says it was on PBS in the USA so likely in their offerings too. But the cast does not include Sting / Gordon Sumner… so likely not the same as the radio reference…