The Fifth Element (1997)

Director: Luc Besson                                    Writer: Luc Besson
Film Score: Eric Serra                                  Cinematography: Thierry Arbogast
Starring: Bruce Willis, Gary Oldman, Ian Holm and Milla Jovovich

Another bit of craziness from the mind of Luc Besson. The Fifth Element, released the same year as Men In Black, is a similar story of aliens who want to destroy earth and, like Armageddon, it’s going to take Bruce Willis to stop them. Unfortunately, it’s not a very good film. In the first place it tries to do too many things at once, and in the second it doesn’t do any of them particularly well. Bruce Willis plays, what else, a sci-fi cab driver. In how many other films have we seen that before? When Milla Jovovich falls into his cab he begins to feel responsible and tries to help her find what she’s looking for. Yet another pretty standard cliché.

The whole thing really is a mess. Aliens from another world first land in 1919 and tell of a great evil that will return to Earth in three hundred years. The only thing that can save the planet is the fifth element. But the aliens don’t say exactly what that is. Flash forward a few centuries and the Earth is indeed threatened by a giant sphere of evil coming through space. The original aliens attempt to deliver the fifth element, but their ship is destroyed. With what remains, the Earth scientists are able to reconstruct a being from the genetic material and thus Mill Jovovich is recreated. She quickly escapes, however, and runs into Willis. When the president’s general calls on his top man, who happens to be Willis, to save the day, he does so for Jovovich’s sake.

Then there’s Gary Oldman as the super goofy arms dealer. Ian Holm plays the last in a long line of priests who guard the stones necessary to unlock the defensive temple. But of course Oldman has them. Or does he? Then there are gunfights with other aliens, an opera aria sung by a blue alien, and a time bomb set by Oldman that they have to diffuse before it destroys all of them. Is there any more that can be jammed in there? The film tries desperately for comedy, but never really achieves anything genuinely funny. There is also plenty of John McClane action from Willis, but it’s never really believable action. The sci-fi elements also suffer because that part of the film is never really taken that seriously. And don’t even get me started on Chris Tucker!

You know, the first Men in Black came out the same year as this film. And even though I’m not a big fan of the MIB franchise, I watched them and enjoyed them to a point. But those films are far superior to Besson’s. It’s a shame. I really love Besson and he’s become one of my favorite directors. It’s the single reason I watched the film, and I was extremely disappointed by how utterly unentertaining it was. I think I know what he was trying to achieve, and certainly it works for some people. But I need much more out of a film than goofy humor that isn’t that funny, a scantily clad heroine, and Bruce Willis. For me, The Fifth Element suffers conceptually and never really recovers. I had much greater expectations for Luc Besson here, but fortunately he has many more films that not only deliver, but make great cinema.