Subject: REVIEW: THE FIFTH ELEMENT (1997)

From: [email-masked] (Scott Renshaw)
Date: 14 May 1997 00:14:28 GMT

THE FIFTH ELEMENT
                       A film review by Scott Renshaw
                        Copyright 1997 Scott Renshaw

(Columbia)
Starring:  Bruce Willis, Gary Oldman, Milla Jovovich, Ian Holm, Chris
Tucker.
Screenplay:  Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen.
Producer:  Patrice Ledoux.
Director:  Luc Besson.
MPAA Rating:  PG-13 (brief nudity, sexual situations, violence, profanity)
Running Time:  127 minutes.
Reviewed by Scott Renshaw

     Here, I had thought to myself as I watched a television spot for THE
FIFTH ELEMENT, may be the acme in hyperbolic idiocy.  In one of those
exclamation point-filled critical blurbs which tend to accompany
pre-release advertising, someone was touting THE FIFTH ELEMENT as "STAR
WARS for the 90s."  I could only shake my head, especially considering it
had only been a few months since we had actually seen STAR WARS for the
90s.  Then I saw THE FIFTH ELEMENT, and I was forced to acknowledge that,
in a perverse way, the statement was completely accurate.  Like STAR WARS,
THE FIFTH ELEMENT is essentially a fairy tale, an archetypal Good Vs. Evil
story dressed up in high-tech trappings.  And like many films of the 90s,
it's so busy and loud that the compelling elements in the story tend to
get lost.

     In a prologue set in 1914, we learn the secret of the mysterious
"fifth element."  It is a weapon created a benevolent alien race called
the Mondoshawan to protect humanity from an evil force which threatens the
universe once every 5000 years.  In 2259, it is time once again for the
Mondoshawan to deliver the weapon, but their ship is downed by agents of
the sinister industrialist Zorg (Gary Oldman).  Only one key to the weapon
survives, a tissue sample which is replicated to produce a mysterious
woman called Leeloo (Milla Jovovich).  When Leeloo flees the authorities,
she ends up in the back seat of Korben Dallas (Bruce Willis), a retired
military man now driving a cab.  Dallas becomes infatuated with the
strange and beautiful passenger who seems to be on everyone's most wanted
list, little expecting that his connection with Leeloo will lead him into
a battle in which the fate of humanity hangs in the balance.

     Whatever else one might say about THE FIFTH ELEMENT, you have to give
this to Luc Besson:  there is nothing he won't try to keep the audience
watching.  THE FIFTH ELEMENT is a blitzkrieg of images, moods and messages
which never lets up and never gives you a chance to get bored.  Scenes of
multi-level 23rd century air traffic provide a vertiginous backdrop for
chase scenes; the production design and costumes (by Dan Weil and
Jean-Paul Gaultier, respectively) are ablaze with color.  Comic relief is
provided by Ian Holm (as a cleric entrusted with the protection of the
fifth element) and Chris Tucker (as a flamboyant radio personality), as
well as by periodic phone calls from Dallas' kvetching mother.  You've got
your good aliens, your bad aliens (the shape-shifting mercenary
Mangalores), your sex (enough to push the PG-13 envelope), your violence
(ditto) and your romance, all tied up in a big shiny anti-war message
before the finale.

     If that sounds like a lot to take in, that's only because it is.  As
undeniably entertaining as individual moments in THE FIFTH ELEMENT may be,
the film never feels like a cohesive narrative with a distinctive sense of
place.  The most memorable creations of fantasy and science fiction, from
THE WIZARD OF OZ to BRAZIL, created worlds which were not just unique but
uniquely real -- every place, character and event were of a piece.  Besson
doesn't create that kind of world, one where you feel transported to
somewhere you've never been.  There are plenty of vivid details in THE
FIFTH ELEMENT, like Dallas' one-room-does-all apartment and an airport
filled with garbage, but they don't add up to anything truly intriguing.
Things happen for the sake of a momentary laugh or gasp rather than for
the creation of the film's internal universe.  It's not a specific future;
it's The Future, impressive but generic.

     It's nice to have sly performers like Willis, Oldman and Holm on
hand to make THE FIFTH ELEMENT's relentlessness somehow forgivable.
Milla Jovovich also does sharp work as Leeloo, doing a riot grrl spin on
Daryl Hannah in SPLASH.  Indeed, there are enough of the right elements in
THE FIFTH ELEMENT that you can't help but wish that they had been put 
together better.  This is a story about heroes, villains and the battle
between Good and Evil where the hero's quest is unclear, the real villain
is given just enough personality to make one threatening phone call, and
the climactic battle is over in a literal and figurative flash.  THE FIFTH
ELEMENT moves, all right, but it moves frantically, like the wired mugger
who accosts Dallas in one of the film's more amusing scenes.  I kept
thinking about how that character might have written THE FIFTH ELEMENT
after an all night bender of Jungian mythopoetics and the 23rd century
upper-of-choice.  That's "STAR WARS for the 90s":  Joseph Campbell on
crack.

     On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 elements:  6.

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