Utter nonsense but entertaining

Rating: 7/10 (16 April 2003)

The best thing about The Fifth Element is Milla Jovovich speaking the Divine Language. With her Eastern European background, she actually manages to make it sound like a real language, unlike some Santa Monica bimbo who got a C in Spanish and couldn't find Europe on a map. This movie is pure nonsense and is almost certainly nothing like what life will really be like 250 years from now, but it has bright, Life Saver candy colors and lots of action. It has some imaginative special effects and futuristic devices that someone actually put some thought into. Several human races and a few alien ones are represented on the screen, rather than a uniform cast of bland Americans. What is most entertaining is its vision of the far future: Gaudy, raucous, colorful, and anarchic. The look of the film borrows a bit from the Italian cinema, the Sixties, Blade Runner, and Terry Gilliam's "Brazil," although it is not as inspired as any of its sources. This is in stark contrast to the dour, Germanic futures we saw in sci-fi flicks from the Fifties through the Seventies and that only started to change with Star Wars, which of course was not in the future but in the futuristic past. Bruce Willis uses his quiet persona to great effect in this film; he is the still point around which all the noisy action revolves; as Korben Dallas, he is carried along by the full-tilt action until the climactic last act, when he finally takes charge. Ian Holm is his usual great self as the nervous wreck of a priest. Gary Oldman as Zorg, the villain, is not evil, just obnoxious.