Force Fed Films: The Fifth Element (1997)

Jim gave me the pleasure of forcing me to watch the Sci-Fi thriller, “The Fifth Element”. I knew very little about this movie going into it, all I saw was that it had Bruce Willis and Milla Jovovich which was enough to hook me in. As a big fan of both the Die Hard and Resident Evil series, I thought to myself that pairing of these two would be a match made in heaven. Later did I find out, this movie is barely anything like those two movies. Either this will be a good or a bad thing is up to your discretion, but my thoughts after the jump.

The world is coming to an end and all there is left to stop this is the fifth element which is Leeloo (Jovovich), and a bunch of stones. To help out the fate of the Earth is Korben Dallas (Willis) and Father Vito Cornelius (Ian Holm). But not all is peachy when the evil force is out to stop them. Zorg (Gary Oldman) has been paid to retrieve these stones for the dark force, which looks like a big dying star.

Korben and Leeloo with her Multi-pass.

I must credit the special effects in this movie. It is pretty amazing how well the effects hold up after almost 15 years later. A lot of the effects were believable. The one that stood out the most was when they were rebuilding Leeloo. I just really like the concept how they build her bones by layers, then they string out all the muscle and lastly they stretched the skin over her. Cool effects with the cool concept making this scene really neat.

I really didn’t find the characters all that good, but interestingly enough I did find the acting during the action sequences really entertaining. To this day, Jovovich is one of the few actresses that can pull off being a badass. Her fight scenes weren’t her best in Fifth Element but they were still really good. And to compliment her, Bruce did not let me down. There wasn’t a lot of gun shooting in this movie, but it was still satisfying. And his Willis-esque acting held up even in this style of movie.

Gary Oldman is terrifying.

But who really stole the acting for me is Gary Oldman. He played the villain scarily well. He was menacing, threatening and a bit psychotic. For a minute I was even hoping for him to win and destroy the planet. He was by far more entertaining to watch than the other two.

But who I really hated was Chris Tucker. I wasn’t sure if he was casted to play a female role, but he acted real feminine and I just hated how he was. And this is weird, because I usually don’t hate him in movies. But he acted all erratic and even more absurb than he usually does. Maybe he has always been this way and I finally see why a lot of people hate him. But whenever he was on screen, I wanted to pluck my eyes out and plug my ears with ‘em.

Sadly though, I didn’t find this movie to be extrodinary. It was just good at best. Even though there were parts that were fun to watch, the whole movie had a ‘meh’ effect on me. The special effects were amazing for its time, the acting was generally great but I still left the movie thinking, that’s all?