Hardware overload...immature instead of audacious

Rating: 4/10 (22 February 2011)

Comedic science fiction-adventure from Luc Besson, with a screenplay Besson co-wrote based upon on a story he originally devised in his teenage years, shows definite signs the filmmaker was entranced--as were we all--with "Star Wars" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark". Unfortunately, Besson doesn't possess the canny, joshing touch of a Lucas or Spielberg, who were also derivative within these genres yet more commercially-viable. Besson doesn't have a clue how to warm up an audience, and one cannot watch a film like "The Fifth Element" without counting off all the movie references (a little "Blade Runner" here, a bit of "Die Hard" there). Bruce Willis, as a Brooklyn cabbie in the 23rd century, is still doing his John McClane schtick--unshaven and gruffly adorable, with a punky-blonde shock of hair. After a gibberish-speaking punk-waif female drops into his taxi, Willis' Korben Dallas becomes involved in a search for four mystical stones which are imperative in preventing world destruction. Obviously, the art direction and design of this thing are amazing; yet, on another level, it merely looks like an inordinate amount of money and imagination wasted on a dime-novel yarn, a futuristic-noir (one with irritating changing music cues, from rock to reggae to opera). For those who stick with it, the finale--after Besson has dispensed with the redundant gunfire and explosions--manages to come together effectively, though the picture still doesn't leave its audience with much beyond a sense of déjà vu. *1/2 from ****