Plava
La Poffy
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Slammin',
Glammin' and Hammin'.
by
Jon Dunmore © 11 Jul 2006.
The Fifth Element has spawned so many negative reviews
(even whilst admitting to enjoying it) that I get the feeling
critics are jealous that Euros can pull off an action blockbuster
with as much brainless flair as Americans - with twice the
guilty pleasure.
In
a future society realized in eye-fatiguing detail by writer/director
Luc Besson, a race of aliens who are half Guardians of the
Universe and half turtle, entrust a secret to generations
of humans - four carved stones representing the four elements
of Water, Fire, Earth and Air, which, when combined with
a mysterious Fifth Element, will keep Ultimate Evil at bay.
This Ultimate Evil apparently threatens the Earth every
500 years, the most recent attack being in 1987 when Jethro
Tull won the Grammy for Best Heavy Metal Album.
Never
mind that of the 116 confirmed elements, the fifth element
is boron (its atomic number being 5, denoting it has 5 protons
in the atom's nucleus - sorry, I forgot the majority of
people still believe in angels and astrology and in superstitions
dating from 500 BC which identified only four elements that
constitute the cosmos - didn't mean to bring SCIENCE into
a fiction based on science…), in a world where supermodel
Milla Jovovich fights evil whilst being 96-percent naked,
I'll run with her being the Fifth Element.
It's
up to THE SLAMMIN' Bruce Willis, playing Korben Dallas playing
Bruce Willis, an ex-army, devil-may-care flying-cab driver,
to keep nekkid alien Leeloo (Jovovich) out of danger and
out of clothes. Hitching a ride to Planet Phloston - for
seemingly no reason other than to flex Digital Domain's
special effects muscles - he must battle aliens that look
like bulldogs, put his hand into the innards of a singer
who looks like a vacuum cleaner and try to avoid - THE GLAMMIN'
Ruby Rhod (Chris Tucker), an interstellar DJ who looks like
a transsexual Chris Rock.
Then
there's THE HAMMIN' Gary Oldman... He's done a junkie Pistol,
he's done a gay playwright, he's done a deaf German composer,
he's done a blood-drinking undead version of Brad Pitt;
here, he is Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg, an interstellar
black market arms dealer with a Bible Belt drawl - is there
anything this thespian can't do? To bring about the end
of existence as we know it, The Ultimate Evil must work
through Zorg's company, for which Zorg charges the usual
agent's fee of 10-percent. 10-percent of the end-of-existence-as-we-know-it
works out to about Canada.
Even
though the mysticism of a prophecy engines this movie's
plot, Besson has unabashedly crafted a popcorn-and-bullets
action-adventure comedy and obviously regards it as such,
never for an instant threatening to tread philosophical,
scientific or preachy ground; paradoxes, non-science, plotholes
and cheap neoperene monster makeup flying hither and thither.
There's
something for all three sexes here: Korben Dallas for the
ladies, Leeloo for the guys and Ruby Rhod for the girly-men.
END
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