The Fifth Element
Starring Bruce Willis, Milla Jovovich and Gary Oldman
Directed by Luc Besson
Now showing in all major cinemas
Review by James O'Donnell
The Fifth Element is flawed. More than this, it is a whole procession of secondary flaws orbiting around a fixed primary flaw. The only thing right with this film, is the visual impact which comes courtesy of the guy responsible for the effects in Blade Runner. Away from that department The Fifth Element is an amateurish mess, all dressed up with nowhere to go, and writer/director Luc Besson (Subway, Big Blue) and co-writer Robert Kamen (Karate Kid, Lethal Weapon 3) are the ones holding the smoking gun.
Using the maxim "all property is theft", Besson and Kamen have looted and pillaged across a large swathe of movie land and returned with a swag-bag bursting with other people's characters, scenes and concepts. They have then tried to hammer these disparate bits into place like a toddler with pieces from 10 different jigsaws. The result comes across rather like a One Nation policy statement.
The rampage begins in Egypt, a la Stargate, moves into the big city to meet Bruce Willis in Blade Runner mode, commits the wholesale rip-off of the laboratory scene from Species before running unashamedly naked through the streets of Soylent Green, Die Hard, Star Wars, The Omen, The Jetsons and eventually climaxes embarrassingly in a blind alley with James Bond.
The Baz Lurhmannesque caricatures only heighten the sense of deja vu, including Bruce's now mandatory invincible-but-nonetheless-reluctant-hero-in-a-singlet-cruisin'-to-funky-music-and-kickin'-ass role, and Ian Holms' very pointless Anglican version of Obi Wan Kenobi. There is also a radio jock whose entire personality revolves around Mercutio's party-piece in last year's Romeo and Juliet and a "Supreme Being" whose supremeness seems to be wholly physical, the sad state of her mind becoming apparent when she winds up bonking Bruce.
Also in the background are all the earth women. This is the world according to Hugh Heffner where women are either:
a) Giggling wiggling super model air hostess/burger maid half-wits with all-enveloping breasts and are always available for easy sex;
b) A half-wit military brute, included for comedy reasons. Comes with all-
enveloping breasts, but not available for sex as she's obviously the wrong shape.
c) Bruce Willis' mum, a twittering half-wit voice on the telephone.
The villain, Zorg, is straight out of Batman, a Hitler/Jim Carrey hybrid with a misplaced moustache. Of course, Zorg's anti-social behaviour can be excused as (here comes that old chestnut of a plot device) he is under the control of an evil planet called Mr Shadow that every 5000 years whizzes through the galaxy to try and destroy planet Earth. Now, Mr Shadow can only be stopped by four special stones representing the four elements, together with the fifth element, so, by way of telephone, he instructs Zorg to secure the aforementioned stones.
These are the secondary flaws, the inevitable offshoots of the central mistake which is this. Near-future Earth-based sci-fi is all about "what if ...?". The disintegrating trajectory of this society is charted along a reasonably logical path until an improbable event sends it all spinning out of control, and when the dust has settled that trajectory has taken a 90-degree turn.
Thus we have the plague society of The Omega Man, the technological nightmare of the Terminator films, the ecological disaster of Waterworld, the ethical complications of alien contact as portrayed in Alien Nation, and Queensland under Rob Borbidge. These societies are the logical effects of bizarre causes.
This is a straightforward formula, but The Fifth Element doesn't apply it and herein lies the film's problem; it portrays an impossible society, a society that is such a contradiction unto itself that it cannot exist; a society that is there, not because of the "what if?"s, but despite them.
This is the 23rd century, and despite the fact that McConsumerism is endemic, there are 200 billion of us. Or, despite the fact there are 200 billion of us, McConsumerism is endemic. It makes no sense either way, yet there we are, socially alienated in mile-high cities looking like concrete mountain ranges. Believing in God, yet living with intelligent aliens whose own cultures seem to have been subjugated by this most illogical of civilisations. By the end, even the Supreme Being is dragged down into its mess.
If The Fifth Element is suggesting a "what if?', it may be "what if capitalism is indestructible?".
Can our present system survive into the 23rd century? A system that feeds off itself and its feeding frenzy is incapable of adapting to ensure the long-term survival of its own needs? A system that increasingly exhorts the values of economic society over the virtues of human society? I would suggest that, Planet of the Apes aside, this is sci-fi's most impossible future yet.