The plot is nothing special but this movie is all about style over substance. I have no problems with that. I like movies that take that approach. Sometimes the style is the substance. That’s certainly the case here. Whether you will enjoy the style of this film is a matter of taste.
It begins in 1914 with an archaeologist in Egypt deciphering inscriptions. That’s when the aliens arrive and announce that the stones are no longer safe on Earth. The stones have something to do with an ultimate weapon for defeating evil. There are four stones. Each represents one of the elements - earth, air, fire and water. But the key is the fifth element.
Several centuries later Earth faces a terrifying undefeatable menace from space. Those aliens (the good aliens) promised to send the fifth element to us but their spaceship was destroyed by space pirates employed by the evil businessman/super criminal Zorg (Gary Oldman).
Some tissues samples are saved from the wrecked spacecraft and regenerated. The result is a strange but beautiful redhead named Leeloo (Milla Jovovich).
Leeloo is confined within an escape-proof isolation chamber from which she easily escapes. She ends up in the flying cab operated by Korben Dallas (Bruce Willis). He’s a retired special forces officer. Now he just wants to drive flying cabs. He doesn’t want trouble. He should hand Leeloo over to the cops when they order him to do so. But Leeloo seems so cute and helpless and nobody likes cops so he rescues her.
There is of course a secret to Leeloo. Crazy priest Cornelius (Ian Holm) has some idea what that secret is.
Huge amounts of mayhem follow, with Zorg and a bunch of disgruntled alien space pirates trying to get their hands on the stone. It builds to a climax on a report planet.
There are lots of explosions and gun battles.
One of the things that makes this movie interesting is that it was written and directed by a Frenchman, the cinematographer was French and the costumes were designed by a Frenchman. As a result this movie looks totally unlike any Hollywood science fiction movie. This is a very French science fiction movie.
Science fiction movies always predict the future wrongly and always get the aesthetics of the future totally wrong. Except maybe The Fifth Element. The people who made this movie were sure of one thing. Whatever the future was going to look like it was going to be crass and vulgar and an orgy of bad taste. Looking at the world today 27 years after the movie was made we certainly seem to be on track to making that prediction come true.
We are not going to get the uber-cool dystopian future of Blade Runner, but we might well get the bad taste on steroids future of The Fifth Element.
The costumes were designed by Jean-Paul Gaultier. Gaultier was notorious for designing clothes that no sane person would ever want to wear, except perhaps to a costume party with a bad taste theme. The staggering awfulness of Gaultier’s designs actually works well in a science fiction movie context. This is a future in which people dress like insane clowns at a fetish party.
Everything about the production design is overblown and vulgar beyond imagining.
Which does make it interesting.
There’s some staggeringly bad acting. I have no idea what Gary Oldman thought he was doing.
Bruce Willis on the other hand is excellent. He’s a Hero. A reluctant Hero perhaps, but a Hero. He’s cynical but fundamentally decent. He doesn’t let bad things happen to helpless girls. He might grumble but he’ll do his best to save them anyway. As for saving the world, yeah he’s in favour of that, but if you want to get him truly motivated present him with a cute helpless girl who needs to be rescued. Willis also has prodigious amounts of gruff charisma.
The movie’s biggest asset is Milla Jovovich. Playing an alien is tricky. You have to make an alien seem truly alien, someone who just doesn’t react in a normal human way. Jovovich does a great job at doing just that. She also has to be so adorable that even the most reluctant hero would risk his neck to save her. Jovovich takes adorableness to whole new levels here. Any man would be willing to sacrifice anything for such a girl. She’s also incredible amounts of fun to watch.
This is an incredibly bad movie, and yet in its deranged way it’s an incredibly good movie. It just depends on what mind-altering substances you’re consuming while watching it. There is so much about this movie that is so bad. But there’s so much that is so good. There’s just no other movie like it. It’s a badly flawed work of deranged visionary genius. For all its flaws it’s an absolute must-see movie and it’s highly recommended.
It also looks terrific on Blu-Ray.
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