THE FIFTH ELEMENT
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1997 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: Luc Besson's manic sci-fi adventure
will likely accrue a following, but its fans will
not include me. The film has great art direction
but a farce of a plot that devolves into a lot of
familiar elements rather than a few new ones.
Besson has a good eye for a scene but a very forced
sense of humor. There were a lot of good people
who worked on this film and it is a pity their
efforts came to so little. Rating: low 0 (-4 to
+4)
New York Critics: 3 positive, 9 negative, 7 mixed
I wonder if this is a postmodern science fiction movie? If so I am willing to go back to the Modern and start over from there. THE FIFTH ELEMENT is what you would get if you combined a plot from HEAVY METAL comic magazine, the pacing of a Japanese anime film, and Terry Gilliam visualizations. It is a film that will probably have a cult following while others will find it, as my wife put it, appallingly bad. France is known for modest art films, and director Luc Besson is French, but he is a renegade with a style generally out of empty Hollywood action films. His previous films include LA FEMME NIKITA and LEON (U.S. title: THE PROFESSIONAL). Here he has made a film with perhaps the best art direction since BLADERUNNER and uses it to tell a dim-witted pop-sci-fi story. Besson, who also co-authored the screenplay, realized that a good plot might be hard to follow for some. He simulates the same effect by having a bad plot that just has a lot of stupid things happening very, very fast.
The Ultimate Evil comes visiting our solar system every 5000 years in the form of a huge glowing sphere that for some unexplained reason is trying to destroy the Earth. I guess that is just what huge glowing spheres do. With the help of some strange aliens and with four mystic stones we Earth people have been able to fend off the evil in the past. In 1914 the friendly aliens took the stones away for safekeeping. Previously they had been guarded by a long line of priests. The priests still know what do to about the coming evil, but no longer have the stones they need. Our main story is set early in the 23rd Century. The Evil is returning. There are forces of Good trying to stop the end of the world and forces of Evil trying to steal the stones. The leader of the evil forces is an industrialist named Zorg, played by Gary Oldman. Just what Zorg hopes to gain by letting his planet be destroyed, if it is his planet, is left as a loose end. I guess stealing mystic symbols is just what evil industrialists do. One of the good aliens is killed and cloned, but in cloned form seems to be a beautiful woman, Milla Jovovich as Le-Eluu. She is terrified of the humans who have cloned her and she takes a swan dive off a skyscraper (all buildings seem to be skyscrapers in the 23rd Century) and lands in the floating taxicab of Korben (Bruce Willis). This pulls Korben into the action and starts him on the quest for the four elemental stones.
Bruce Willis is in the lead and--as he seems to have wanted to show people with IN COUNTRY--he can act. He just chooses not to push himself much beyond the limited roles he has been playing. Of somewhat more interest is Milla Jovovich. Though much of the film she must speak a nonsense language--actually it sounds a lot like Italian--and makes it sound very natural. This is not generally considered an important acting skill, but here it was what was what was required and she does a very credible job. Gary Oldman at one time seemed to be the Robert Duvall of his generation. He would do well to stay away from Luc Besson films since this is the second film in which Besson has been able to coax from Oldman his very worst and most exaggerated performances. His performance here is at best just not notable, and that is really unusual for an otherwise very good actor. Ian Holm plays a priest of the line entrusted with alien secrets. Like Oldman, he has done better acting jobs and perhaps their efforts are exaggerated intentionally by Besson so nobody misses the point that this film is not intended to be taken entirely seriously.
This film had the budget, the art direction, the special effects, and the cast to make a much better film. One has the feeling that Besson is really talking down to his audiences and laughing up his sleeve. There are moments in this film that show what it could have been, but unfortunately it was no more than it was. This is a film that might be better to watch with the sound off. I rate it a low 0 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
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