*** (out of ****)
Starring Bruce Willis, Gary Oldman, Milla Jovovich, Ian Holm, Chris Tucker, Brion James, Tiny Lister, Luke Perry, John Neville, and Mac McDonald.
Directed & written by Luc Besson
1997 PG13
Luc Besson’s “The Fifth Element” is a cheerfully lunatic adventure that takes itself seriously for about the first frame of the first title card and then goes ballistic for the next two hours. It’s “Die Hard” in outer space, or maybe the 1996 version of “The Mummy,” but whatever it is it’s pretty much a cartoon. Our Hero is Bruce Willis, who, when given a good script, is comparable to Harrison Ford in winning our sympathy amidst nonstop explosions, death-defying escapes, and utterly implausible gun-battles. In “The Fifth Element,” Willis is chased from one extreme of the cosmos to the other, fending off aliens, hijackers, an obnoxious talkshow host, a tyrannical billionaire, and an inexplicably evil black cloud. All this is set amidst solid special effects and some really impressive production design.
The plot. Golly, the plot. Three hundred years in the future a Giant Cloud of Death is heading toward the Earth, gobbling up everything in its path, not unlike the planet-eater from “Star Trek: The Old Generation,” but with an FX budget comparable to the GNP of Uganda. Desperate, the President of the Earth (crazy-eyed ex-wrestler Tiny Lister, in a casting choice nothing short of brilliant) turns to one of his spiritual advisors (Ian Holm), who claims that this Giant Cloud of Death is not unknown to his faith. Holm dresses, acts, and crosses himself like a Catholic, but I don’t know where he’s been getting his communion wafers. Anyway, he reveals that a race of aliens has a secret weapon to defeat the Giant Death Cloud, but the aliens are ambushed by space pirates en route to Earth. Their ship is destroyed, with all hands lost.
Well, not quite all hands. The surviving hand, which is found floating around in space clutching a control panel, is cloned back to life and—schwing!—the secret weapon is revealed to be a babe (Milla Jovovich)! Disoriented, she gets loose and is rescued by a former-commando-turned-cabbie (Bruce Willis). His name, by the way, is Korben Dallas, a name second only to Austin Dallas in tough guy absurdness. (Bonus points to anyone who can remember before the end of this review where I got the name Austin Dallas). Soon Willis and Jovovich are galloping across the galaxy trying to solve the mystery of the Giant Death Cloud. Hot on their heels, in another masterstroke of casting, is an evil billionaire with the utterly improbable name of Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg, who speaks with an inexplicable Texas accent. He is in the service of the Giant Death Cloud for no comprehensible reason, except that he’s played by Gary Oldman, and no one plays evil as well as Dracula himself.
The structure of “The Fifth Element” is pretty standard: a hero, his love interest, and a few sidekicks run around, fight things, and save the day in the end. The sidekicks are to make light of every situation with winsome quips and the villain should glower viciously whenever possible. “The Fifth Element” lucks out with Gary Oldman as its villain, here making a variation on his stoned madman from “The Professional,” while Chris Tucker plays a cross-dressing talkshow host, enlisted by Willis, whose stratospheric obnoxiousness is nothing short of breathtaking. Things move quickly, are often tongue-in-cheek, and despite the emphasis on the look of the movie there’s still enough for some good human moments, like when Oldman finds himself choking on a piece of fruit and discovers that all the expensive, futuristic doodads in his office are powerless to save him.
“The Fifth Element” is simply great to look at it. New York three hundred years in the future looks like a city from “Blade Runner” after a streak of environmentally conscious mayors tried to do their best. Skyscrapers have made a mockery of gravity and the air is clogged with flying cars, but the sun still comes up. The luxury spaceliner to which Willis and his cohorts flee is also grand to behold, like a Carnival cruise painted gold, put in space, then multiplied by about ten.
Obviously Hollywood is constantly trying to put out movies with more or less this exact description: fun, silly, fast, exciting, good effects, likeable characters. A lot of mediocrity fits that bill, with sidekicks that aren’t funny, villains that aren’t menacing, and action that is more gruesome than kinetic. Think of “Judge Dredd,” with its excessive gore and Rob Schneider’s flat one-liners. It’s a little hard to say why “The Fifth Element” is so much fun and movies like “Judge Dredd” are not. It may simply be a matter of tone, and the right tone to all its absurdity is something “The Fifth Element” has in spades.
P.S. Austin Dallas: Steven Seagal’s character in “Executive Decision.”
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