THE FIFTH ELEMENT
A film review by Paul-Michael Agapow
Copyright 1997 Paul-Michael Agapow
It is 250 years in the future. Dallas (Willis), an ex-soldier, drives taxis in the swarming metropolis of New York. One day a orange-haired nymphet Leeloo (Jovovich) speaking an unknown language crash-lands in his taxi. Soon she is doing the "speed learn from an encyclopedia" shtick and with the help of a priest (Holm, and by the look of his acolyte's headgear his religion must worship of early 80s rock bands) we find out the universe is doomed. Unless, of course, four widgets are obtained from a remote location and assembled in a Dungeons and Dragons puzzle room, against the wishes of the evil businessman Zorg (Oldman) and a group of unexplained shape-changing aliens.
Did that sound silly? You have no idea ... There are several types of logical blunders in fiction. In "The Fifth Element" the first type betrays perhaps nothing more than carelessness on director Besson's part: black holes mentioned in 1914, temperatures of -5000 C, a (apparently) three hour flight during which the passengers cryosleep to avert boredom, a planet "in the constellation of ...". Stupid, but the plot does not in any way depend on these points - they are at most distracting. You shouldn't get too upset about such trivia. A second might be the absurd fact that once accepted allows the rest of the story to proceed - a flying, invulnerable superhero; a rapid growing, parasitic alien that can lay eggs in any humanoid; or (in this case) the assembly of four artifacts to save the universe.
But "The Fifth Element" abounds with another type of mistake, in the logic that leads the story from one point to another. Although the moment to moment action is straightforward and the plot is essentially simple, upon analysis it is completely nonsensical. The President, the fate of the entire universe at stake mind you, orders a low-key one-man mission. Leeloo is surprised and shattered by the human concept of war, forgetting that her race has spent eons fighting genocidal forces intent on obliterating all life, that her ship was destroyed by hostile forces, and that she has been karate-chopping and waving guns about for the past hour. Zorg's motives are murky and his controller totally unexplained. Several times the plot powers itself out of dead-ends using "with one mighty leap he was free!" logic. Possibly there is a lot of footage on the cutting room floor, possibly a lot of explanatory material was excised from the script. Or maybe the film is just plain dumb.
The cast is crowded with superfluous characters and execrable acting. Gary Oldman, sounding like a cross between Gomer Pyle and Anthony Robbins, falls into both categories. On the bright side Willis does well, albeit as a caricature, while Jovovich is surprisingly good even when required to utter stupid lines. (The more English she speaks, the less convincing her character becomes.) Mention should also be made of Luke "don't blink or you'll miss me" Perry, who deserves bigger roles, and a bizarre cameo as a mugger by Matthieu Kassovitz (director of "La Haine" and star of "Un Heros Tres Discret").
And despite the above problems, the film is fairly enjoyable.
Besson has always favoured (and got away with) feel over logic and look over plot. For example, his "Subway" and "La Femme Nikita" are fun despite also being plainly ridiculous. But more recently, with "Leon the Professional" he showed a masterful handling of script, direction and character with more lucid and intense plotting. "The Fifth Element" is big step back to his earlier work, a big, dumb but likeable film. The whole is absurd but the parts are quite good: a bioengineered opera diva, residential blocks designed for police lockdown, the dizzying heights of New York protruding from a smoggy abandoned surface, cigarettes that are 75% filter. In a way the correct film to compare it to would be "Bladerunner", not for the narrative but for the vision of a brash, busy and colourful future - a three-way collision between Ridley Scott, Doc EE Smith and Jean-Paul Gaultier. It also helps that the central conflict is at once broad (good vs. evil) and very personal (Dallas fighting for Leeloo), largely avoiding machismo and flag-waving.
It grieves me to recommend a picture to "switch your mind off" at. But unlike other big dumb pictures (like most anything coming out of the Hollywood system), "The Fifth Element" is a little different, more colourful, more exciting and less offensive. If you're going to take your mind candy, it may as well taste good. Unfortunately this film will probably not come across well on video due to the diminishing of the visuals. [**/ok] and on the Sid and Nancy scale.
"The Fifth Element" Directed by Luc Besson. Starring Bruce Willis, Milla Jovovich, Ian Holm, Gary Oldman, Brion James, Luke Perry, Tom "Tiny" Lister Jr, Matthieu Kassovitz. Released 1997.
------ paul-michael agapow (agapow@latcs1.oz.au), La Trobe Uni, Infocalypse [archived at http://www.cs.latrobe.edu.au/~agapow/Postviews/]
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews