A feast for the eyes.

Rating: 8/10 (17 August 2018)

I need to say straight up that I love this movie. It is entertaining, it is stylish, it's endlessly quotable and it's filled with one great performance after another. But it's not a great movie.
This is what I would describe as being style over substance. It looks amazing. Luc Besson really did a number on the sets and costumes for this movie. It's like nothing you've ever seen before and it never takes itself too seriously. But in the process of trying to make a good looking movie, he failed to make it a great movie.
The story itself is rather simple. There's a bad force in the universe and the only way to stop it is with four sacred stones and the titular Fifth Element. This happens to be the universe's supreme being. Not God or anything like that but a perfect being. A perfect being played by the lovely Milla Jovovich. She, along with taxicab driver and former Special Forces soldier Bruce Willis must fetch the stones and get back to the Great Pyramid to stop the great evil from destroying the Earth and taking over the universe.
The movie itself comes off a little unhinged at times and more than just a little schizophrenic with elements and scenes that don't really fit into the narrative. And of course there's the elephant in the room in the form of Chris Tucker as a larger than life, hyperactive and extremely fast talking radio DJ. He's extremely polarizing with people that love him and people that can't stand him.
It's definitely achieved the status of a cult classic movie with people either loving it or hating it. There seems to be no middle ground.
So give it a try, who knows, you might like what you see.