Fifth Element, The [2-Disc Ultimate Edition]

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Director Luc Besson might plead the Fifth if asked about some of the elements from his futuristic adventure that bear resemblance to a certain George Lucas space saga—like priests in brown robes who sink back when there's a disturbance in the force, and creatures that look like they could have sidled up to the bar at the Cantina or cuddled next to Jabba the Hutt. Then again, he wrote it when he was a teenager, so who'd remember? And the irony is that for all the Jedi and creature flashbacks you might have while watching "The Fifth Element," it's possible that Lucas learned one thing from Besson's flamboyantly crazy and funny film: don't give your goofiest character the spotlight so close to the film's end. It mucks things up.

That's what happens in Besson's film, where a flaming TV/radio-host skips about with a slender headset and thumping theme music right around the time that the fate of life as we know it is about to teeter on the brink. And while life-as-we-know-it continues to teeter, Ruby Rhod (Chris Tucker) keeps prattling and prancing away in a way that was humorous for the first ten minutes, but then starts to grate on you as much as a certain Jamaican-accented Gungan, meesa thinks—distracting from an ending that should have packed more punch. I mean, this WAS supposed to be doomsday.

But in the end, the end doesn't matter. It's the ride that counts, and Besson takes viewers on a wild one. With a big budget reportedly in the 90 million range, Besson combines a plot involving "Atlantis" stone mysticism with "Star Wars"/"Star Trek" aliens, outlandish "Barbarella" outfits, and a kind of "Bladerunner"/"Zoolander" cyberpunk feel and soundtrack. And who better to play a former hero and current taxi driver about to help save the world than that old diehard, Bruce Willis? "The Fifth Element" is as visually stimulating as a video game and has all the audio excitement of really wild music video. In short, it's a lot of fun, from start to finish—despite the amount of camera time Besson gives his goofy TV/radio-host and some muddled moments.

I'm usually a little wary of futuristic films. Jules Verne set the bar pretty high, and more than a few "visionaries" since then have simply lacked the imagination or the sense of culture, science and technology to map out an interesting but still believable scenario for future life. Flamboyant cyberpunk costumes aside, Besson and his designers come up with enough little things in daily life where you notice them and think, Yes, of course!, or else his futuristic gizmos give us the same pleasure as those prehistoric gadgets from "The Flintstones." Yes, there are the obligatory flying cars (and even a flying cruise ship), but the futuristic cityscape looks perfectly believable and takes a backseat to the futuristic interiors and objects of daily life. This is a fast-paced film, and part of that is the result of futuristic images that flash in front of us with breakneck speed. There's an element of funk to it all, and the music reinforces that notion. Add a liberal dose of humor throughout, as Besson does with this sometimes hilarious, sometimes tense film, and you've got a winner—despite some of the mumbo-jumbo about four elements and a fifth element or it's death forever not making total sense. But don't think too hard about the logic. Just kick back and plug in your senses and enjoy the stimulation.

Willis plays Korben Dallas, an ex-Major who has an ostentatious shelf of trophies and medals in his kitchen to prove how good he was. But now he's driving a New York City cab, and in the future the second you make a mistake a voice announces that points have been taken off your driver's license. He's down to like five, so he's ripe for being bamboozled into taking the mission that he's going to be offered. But we don't see Willis until the third scene. "The Fifth Element" begins in Egypt in 1914, where an archaeologist is figuring out a wall of hieroglyphs that holds the secret of the ultimate battle between good and evil. There's a priest who is about to kill the fellow and his assistant (Luke Perry, from the old "Beverly Hills, 90210" TV show) because they're getting too close. Then a spaceship that looks like a giant tuberous vegetable lands and a bunch of aliens in double-wide armor that makes them look like coppery Weebles enters. It turns out that these Mondoshawan are actually the GOOD guys, and in an attempt to clue us in on what's to follow we get a quick explanation about positioning stones from the four elements (earth, wind, fire, air) in four corners and a fifth element standing in the middle. That will create a superpower that will defeat evil in the ultimate battle. They grab the stones that the priest had been guarding and tell him he's to train a successor.

Cut to 300 years later and a governmental war room of presumably the United States or a new Federation. That's not as clear as the threat. It seems a giant flaming and festering ball of evil that resembles the Death Star with a molten surface is heading toward earth, and warships attempt to destroy it. Call this "Yet Another 48 Hours," because that's how much time the planet has before the evil blob acclimates to Earth's atmosphere and wreaks its havoc. Cut again to a bare-chested Willis being awakened by a futuristic alarm, going through his morning motions, and disarming a drugged-out punk with a weird-looking gun who greets him the moment he opens his door. Welcome to the 23rd Century!

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