The Fifth Element (1997)

October 03, 2009

Netflix Stream, Seattle, WA

* ½ / ****

By Scott Muoio

In the future, an undiscriminating flaming ball of evil (literally!) will hurtle toward earth destroying everything in its path. Only an ancient race of squat alien robots and a wiley orange haired Milla Jovovich in a lycra gauze cat suit can stop it from wiping out the human race. Will a taxi driving Bruce Willis be able to help the aliens and Milla foil the flaming ball while ending the terrorist campaign of a mugging Gary Oldman? Really, who cares?

Ambition without control is the formula for the unwieldy science-fiction oddity, The Fifth Element. The ambition arrives in the bold aesthetic of everything we see on screen. The lack of control results in poor screen writing, overindulgent set pieces, and a tone that believes action comedy is easily achieved with giant blaster gunfights being commentated on by a dragged out Chris Tucker. Bor-ing!

I have always believed that when a movie relies on gun fights to continuously move its storyline then you know it isn’t good. The Fifth Element does just that, carelessly upping the volume with every futuristic blaster shot as it desperately tries to make entertainment out of a muddled storyline and silly looking though creatively ambitious sets and costumes. With annoying, mugging characters filling in the rest of the details this cross between Armageddon and Total Recall is a plain old silly mess.

To put the film in better perspective, let’s compare it to Dino DeLaurentis’ camp masterpiece, Flash Gordon. Where Flash Gordon is camp so bad it’s good, The Fifth Element is too pompous to settle for condescending kudos. Where DeLaurentis would certainly relent that his film is indeed an entertaining joke, I suspect director Luc Besson sees his The Fifth Element in a far different, more serious light. It’s a shame, too because The Fifth Element could have been a camp masterpiece. As is, it’s an easily forgotten sci-fi stinker, more Judge Dredd than Blade Runner, and neither bad enough nor good enough to be entertaining.

Director: Luc Besson

Producer: Patrice LeDoux

Writer: Luc Besson (Story), Robert Mark Kamen and Luc Besson (Screenplay)

Starring: Bruce Willis, Gary Oldman, Milla Jovovich, Ian Holm, Chris Tucker

Original Music: Eric Serra

Cinematographer: Theirry Arbogast

Editor: Sylvie Landra