Film Review — The Fifth Element (1997)

Mul-ti-pass.

★★

The Fifth Element is exactly what you’d expect from something concocted from a child’s imagination. It’s big and bombastic and dazzling and frantic. A real fever dream of fiction.

It’s also, unfortunately, not very good.

Don’t get me wrong, the film scores on technical and world-building levels. The batshit core concept is just intriguing and mostly fun enough to sustain the film’s two-hour runtime. Eric Serra’s eclectic score is basically the 90’s answer to Vangelis’ Blade Runner. This is some good stuff here, and I totally see why so many love it so much.

But its drawbacks exceed its positives. Milla Jovovich is fine in a breakout role, but director Luc Besson is too enthusiastic with his star with several moments and shots verging on creepy voyeurism that the movie even acknowledges. Bruce Willis is fine, but you can see the origins of the same indifference that would painfully define his later career. Gary Oldman turns chicken shit into chicken salad like the legend he is, but his villain is painfully redundant.

Oh, and Chris Rock’s character is easily the worst sidekick of all time.

The Fifth Element’s biggest issue, however, is just how inorganic it feels. You can literally hear the cogs groan as the story creaks from moment to moment, never feeling driven by character motivation and action. The stakes, pushed by the ludicrously named “Mr. Shadow” as the central threat, feel clunky and forced with the action suddenly escalating only after the resolution of one of the film’s many subplots.

Obviously this isn’t a film to be taken too seriously, but that argument doesn’t excuse it from failing to live up to its promise. It looks great and shouldn’t fail to entertain. Just don’t think about it too hard.

The Fifth Element (1997)
Genre: Sci-Fi/Action
Directed By: Luc Besson
Starring: Bruce Willis, Milla Jovovich, Gary Oldman, Chris Tucker, Ian Holm
Running Time: 126 minutes
Release Date: May 7, 1997
Certificate (UK): 15