Besson manages to combine laughs with top-notch futuristic action and drama, so that it all somehow works together.
Korben is enlisted by his old commander to meet a contact on an exotic resort ship in order to get the stones from her. As it turns out, he's not the only one after the stones. Mr. Zorg (Gary Oldman), who's dressed like the ultimate cyberpunk but talks like Jethro Clampett, seems to serve the evil blob. He wants the stones, and so he hires the Mangalores, a bunch of alien morphing mercenaries, to help him get them. Also involved is a "practically perfect" woman, and we're not talking Mary Poppins. Milla Jovovich stars as Leeloo, the great red-aired hope and "fifth element." In one of the coolest and most visionary sequences in the film, a gloved hand is brought to a lab and we watch machines totally reconstruct the destroyed human who was once attached to that hand from DNA. And to the delight of these leering lab men, they end up constructing a beautiful naked woman. She speaks only the language of the Gods, and spooked by her surroundings she bolts and does a high dive into air-traffic, only to fall into Korben's cab. Thus begins a crazy odyssey that careens from here to absurdity en route to that inevitable final confrontation with evil.
Video:
Thankfully the production values are up to the task of delivering the potpourri of images Besson throws at us. "The Fifth Element" is presented in 2.35: 1 anamorphic widescreen, remastered for this Ultimate (2-disc) Edition in High Definition so that the colors are clear and vibrant, and the images sharp no matter what the lighting. Excellent quality!
Audio:
Oh, yeah! With both the DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1 options, the soundtrack really hops and pops, with all sorts of zings and zips crossing the audio field and plenty of rear-speaker action from start to finish. The sound ROCKS, plain and simple. The spoken language is English, with subtitles in English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Chinese, and Thai.
Extras:
There's no commentary, but the special features produced by Mirage Productions are quite good—all 120 minutes of them. There IS a full-length trivia fact track that's plenty fun, and enjoyable behind-the-scenes featurettes on The Alien Element, The Digital Element, The Visual Element, The Star Element, and The Fashion Element, plus another on The Diva—which would have been titled "The Diva Element" if it wasn't the sixth featurette. The format for the extras is really pretty nice. Each short feature has the usual blend of clips and talking heads, but those are accompanied by tests. The Visual Element, for example, features tests from six different sets, and The Star Element has, in addition to short blips on Willis, Tucker, and Jovovich, four Jovovich screen tests, and The Fashion Element has one Korben and three Leeloo tests. The best of the bunch are the Diva and Alien segments. The Diva feature includes an interview—the first time that the woman has apparently spoken about the subject—with Maiwenn, who played the operatic Diva on the resort ship. It turns out that she was Besson's fiancée at the time. The creature feature includes a segment on Zorg's pet, Picasso, and another on Strikers, long-snouted alien sanitation workers that never made it into an underground scene where subway commuters go here and there against a mound of rubble. It's far from the best collection of features for a high-tech, special effects-oriented film, but what's here is, as I've said, quite good. The thing is, the features only whet your appetite for more.
Bottom Line:
Some of the acting is as befits a genre film, and there are those muddy moments where you're not quite sure exactly what's going on. But Besson pulls everything together in order to produce an ultimately satisfying film. Maybe he should direct a screwball comedy next, because Besson skillfully juggles simultaneous plot threads and characters, cutting from Korben and Leeloo's antics to the Mangalores, to Zorg, to Ruby Rhod, to the president and his aides, and to the priest (Ian Holm) and his new assistant. With this film, he certainly proves that he's got a good sense of comedy, managing to combine laughs with top-notch futuristic action and drama, so that it all somehow works together. "The Fifth Element" is missing a few things that would make it a great film, but as it is it's a very good one.
Video:
Thankfully the production values are up to the task of delivering the potpourri of images Besson throws at us. "The Fifth Element" is presented in 2.35: 1 anamorphic widescreen, remastered for this Ultimate (2-disc) Edition in High Definition so that the colors are clear and vibrant, and the images sharp no matter what the lighting. Excellent quality!
Audio:
Oh, yeah! With both the DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1 options, the soundtrack really hops and pops, with all sorts of zings and zips crossing the audio field and plenty of rear-speaker action from start to finish. The sound ROCKS, plain and simple. The spoken language is English, with subtitles in English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Chinese, and Thai.
Extras:
There's no commentary, but the special features produced by Mirage Productions are quite good—all 120 minutes of them. There IS a full-length trivia fact track that's plenty fun, and enjoyable behind-the-scenes featurettes on The Alien Element, The Digital Element, The Visual Element, The Star Element, and The Fashion Element, plus another on The Diva—which would have been titled "The Diva Element" if it wasn't the sixth featurette. The format for the extras is really pretty nice. Each short feature has the usual blend of clips and talking heads, but those are accompanied by tests. The Visual Element, for example, features tests from six different sets, and The Star Element has, in addition to short blips on Willis, Tucker, and Jovovich, four Jovovich screen tests, and The Fashion Element has one Korben and three Leeloo tests. The best of the bunch are the Diva and Alien segments. The Diva feature includes an interview—the first time that the woman has apparently spoken about the subject—with Maiwenn, who played the operatic Diva on the resort ship. It turns out that she was Besson's fiancée at the time. The creature feature includes a segment on Zorg's pet, Picasso, and another on Strikers, long-snouted alien sanitation workers that never made it into an underground scene where subway commuters go here and there against a mound of rubble. It's far from the best collection of features for a high-tech, special effects-oriented film, but what's here is, as I've said, quite good. The thing is, the features only whet your appetite for more.
Bottom Line:
Some of the acting is as befits a genre film, and there are those muddy moments where you're not quite sure exactly what's going on. But Besson pulls everything together in order to produce an ultimately satisfying film. Maybe he should direct a screwball comedy next, because Besson skillfully juggles simultaneous plot threads and characters, cutting from Korben and Leeloo's antics to the Mangalores, to Zorg, to Ruby Rhod, to the president and his aides, and to the priest (Ian Holm) and his new assistant. With this film, he certainly proves that he's got a good sense of comedy, managing to combine laughs with top-notch futuristic action and drama, so that it all somehow works together. "The Fifth Element" is missing a few things that would make it a great film, but as it is it's a very good one.
Average user rating (1-5):
[release]13748[/release]