Review of The Fifth Element (1997) by Noah L — 14 Feb 2014

Luc Besson's last good film as writer/director. "Leon/The Profession" was an absolute high point for him as a filmmaker and he followed that film up with this, which is a grand bit of popcorn sci-fi.

The story involves a secret society protecting a secret weapon to defend off an impending attach on earth. That's the big story. The film actually follows futuristic cab driver Bruce Willis getting caught up in working with the secret society when Milla Jovovich literally falls into his cab.

From there, the film is a breezy stream of action set pieces, including flying car chases, wild shootouts and epic space battles. The film's villain is a scene chewing Gary Oldman as the evil Zorg, who actually never comes fact-to-face with the hero, Willis.

What makes this film work so well is that it knows it's a popcorn film and has no pretenses of grandeur (as compared to Star Wars episodes 1, 2, & 3) and that Besson's vision of the future is a rich, living and well thought out place.

Besson began writing the script while a teenager and I think it's the amount of time he's thought about this story that led to so many ideas about how this future world works, even if it's just a quick thruway moment like a retractable shower or even the more thought out mythology of the titular fifth element, viewer can really tell Besson has thought about this world quite a lot.

Besides Willis, Jovovich and Oldman there's a great supporting cast that includes Ian Holm, Luke Perry, Brion James, John Neville and Tiny Lister as the biggest President of the United State you've ever seen on film.

I've never been a Chris Tucker, so his purposefully annoying character came off as more grating than funny and was a real drag on the last act of the film for me. Other than that, I quite like this film, though it's still nowhere as great at "The Professional.

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