THE FIFTH ELEMENT
A film review by Ryan Maves
Copyright 1997 Ryan Maves
"The Fifth Element" is a fairly decent sci-fi flick by Luc Besson, Frenchman and creator of other such timeless epics as "La Femme Nikita" and "The Professional". After some coin-flipping, my girlfriend and I decided to go see this instead of "Austin Powers". Following some cajoling of my roommate and another friend, the four of us made our way to the theater. And this is what we thought.
In short: nice try. "The Fifth Element" is a spectacular-looking movie with a great soundtrack, but things drop off abruptly after that. Besson seems to have borrowed its plot from a grade-C fantasy novel I read in junior high. Not to rob the viewing audience of the thrill of seeing it, this is the essence of the storyline:
Every 5,000 years, the stars align properly to permit a black hole to form, unleashing an ultimate Evil with a Capital E that immediately heads out to destroy life, specifically life on Earth. A band of good aliens left a weapon on Earth long ago (in Egypt) to destroy this evil; this weapon is formed out of the classical four elements (wind, earth, fire, and water) which are united around a mysterious "fifth element". Don't worry, all of this is explained using lots of little words in the first five minutes of the film.
The film opens in Egypt in the early 20th century, at the tmeple where the weapon is stored. The good aliens show up (to say "hi", I suppose) but are driven away when Luke Perry (I'm quite serious), an archaeologist's assistant, blows his top and starts shooting at them. They take the weapon's components away with them for safekeeping until Evil returns.
In any case, the appointed time arrives during the 23rd century, and the good aliens are unfortunately prevented from personally delivering the weapon by some evil aliens known as Mangalores. Only "the fifth element" survives the crash of their ship, and it is taken to Earth to be restored.
What is this ultimate weapon? It is an anorexic supermodel, Milla Jovovich, who escaped from the Eart authorities to be rescued by formal elite soldier and current cabbie, Bruce Willis. And you know you're in trouble when Bruce Willis is the best actor onscreen for the first thrity minutes or so.
Better acting, in the form of Gary Oldman, arrives soon. Gary is an evil industrialist who wants to capture the weapon for some reason or another. He pursues the Willis-Jovovich duo relentlessly as they quest across planets to retrieve the remaining components of the weapon. En route, Milla discovers that humanity is capable of great destruction (gasp!) and that love will keep us together (awwww...).
This movie has, it must be said, moments of greatness. The action scenes are great, the effects are stunning, and all in all Besson has created a stunning and rich world out of his mind's eye. It's sad, though, that the best parts of the film are the parts when (a) no one is saying very much, and (b) no one is thinking very much. The revelations made in the film (war=bad, love=good) are about as profound as my breakfast, and the underlying "mythology" of an ultimate Evil and the four elements are ideas that any two-bit writer could have scribbled on a bar napkin at 3 AM after drinking a few stiff Manhattans.
Oddly enough, I think this movie deserves to be seen. It is a great sensory experience, particularly the backgrounds, effects, and the great soundtrack by Eric Serra. (Warning: it does look "French". The soldiers even wear berets.) The impact of this film could be lost on video, so shoot for a matinee.
I give this a 5 on a 1-10 scale.
Ryan C. Maves -smithers@u.washington.edu -http://weber.u.washington.edu/~smithers University of Washington School of Medicine
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