Great Blockbuster

Rating: 8/10 (23 October 2014)

Luc Besson's The Fifth Element is an entertaining and enjoyable film. It pulls the viewer in and keeps you there to the end. Through action-packed fight scenes, a love-story that saves the world, and awkwardly entrancing villains, The Fifth Element builds a universe of destruction, mistrust, and the all-powerful male. It leaves space for depth, but creates a narrative with wonderful musical backing that is greatly enjoyable.
The movie starts with an alien race, the Mondoshawans, arriving in ancient Egypt to collect 4 stones that power the only weapon capable of defeating an unspeakable evil that returns every 5,000 years. They will return when the time is right. Jump forward to the time of the attack, and the spaceship is returning to earth but is shot out of the sky. Only a hand is found that is reconstructed to create Leeloo, a humanoid whose DNA is "perfect." She runs away and falls in love with Korben Dallas, our other main character, while they fight to find the four stones so that they can save the universe with the fifth element, love.
Written by Luc Besson at the age of 16, The Fifth Element was released as a film when he was 38. The story line is supported by a great cast of characters including Bruce Willis as Korben Dallas, Milla Jovovich as Leeloo, and Chris Tucker as Ruby Rhod. Korben and Leeloo work wonderfully together as the leads, although Leeloo's helplessness as a perfect being shows her as being feminine to a fault, while Korben is overly masculine. She only shows strength in one fight scene between her and a group of Mangalores, an alien race hired to find the stones, at the end of which, she goes right back to being helpless and requiring the help of Korben. Chris Tucker shows a hyper effeminate male, whose only purpose is comedic relief while being over- sexualized and helpless. The main villain (with a face), Zorg, is played by Gary Oldman. He is a pleasure seeking sociopath bent on universal destruction, but he is comedic in his own right.
The soundtrack, composed by Éric Serra builds up and adds depth to the film. The majority of the film has music in the background and this in no way takes away from it. The strongest moment, the "Diva Dance Opera," was not composed by Serra, but combined with the dancing blue alien and the Leeloo's intense fight scene, it creates a perfect moment of music and film. Although it may not have created a soundtrack that I would purchase to listen to at home, for the film, it was ideal.
Overall, The Fifth Element is a great blockbuster. Action-packed, with comedic and entrancing characters, not to mention great costumes, it sets itself up to be enjoyed. If you're looking for an enjoyable evening to sit back, laugh, and go to a different world, I'd recommend sitting down and watching this film.