By Luc Besson, 1997.
Starring Ian Holm, Brion James, Milla Jovovich, Tom "Tiny" Lister Jr., Gary Oldman, Tricky, Chris Tucker, Bruce Willis.
Rating: 9.5/10, 7.5/10.
The story is weak. The acting is spotty. The ending is disgustingly sappy. But who cares?!
Any movie as consistently inventive in its sounds and visuals as this is deserves high, high praise. The big things are fantastic, whether they’re an impossibly tall blue alien singing futuristic opera or the dinginess of an apartment building or the look of the bustling, multi-layered, flying-car filled metropolis. But look closer and the film is filled with ingenious subtle touches: cigarettes that are nearly all filter. The slight, unusual southern accent of the villain, Zorg (Oldman), or his brilliant full name, Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg. The completely realistic-sounding alien language spoken by Leeloo (Jovovich). The nail-painting device we see Zorg’s secretary using.
The Fifth Element consistently avoids a problem that bugs me about movies set in the future. The camera tends to focus obscenely on the technology, like—look at this! It’s futuristic! Isn’t it amazing? This is such a distraction to me...it would be as if someone made a movie set in the present and used all zoomy, dramatic cinematography every time someone switched on a light switch. Or even did a close-up on the hand flicking the switch, and then moving into the wall and super-fast following the course of the electricity to the light bulb, or some such nonsense. It always just reminds me of where I am and what I’m doing—which can be good in a movie when it’s done deliberately, but is terrible when it’s not—and takes me entirely out of the film. Here, though, it seems like the movie was actually made in whatever ridiculous future year it takes place in. The gizmos and things never call attention to themselves—the hilarious robotic bartender stays firmly in the background, the characters seem completely comfortable in their world, and those cigarettes and that nail-painting thing most people don’t even notice—I didn’t until the fifth or sixth time seeing it.
I won’t bother covering the plot at all, because it’s too unutterably silly to talk about. Really, one shouldn’t go into The Fifth Element expecting much more than eye candy—but a new, mysterious kind of eye candy that’s good for you, too.