Underrated Films Vol. 2

The Fifth Element

To be honest the first time I saw The Fifth Element I fell asleep half way through it. When I got around to watching it again it was...okay. Nothing earth shattering or anything like that. It's just one of those movies that for whatever reason took a couple of viewings to grow on me (I had a similar experience with The Big Lebowski). Unlike many overlooked movies it did very well in theaters, but found a larger cult following when it was released on VHS. Which really is not that much of a surprise since it is an amalgamation of sci-fi, action, comedy, thriller with quirky odd characters. Really it didn't have many qualities of a "main stream" movie, however it did feature Bruce Willis and he is a pretty main stream action movie star...so really it was an odd pairing that worked.


The plot in a nutshell is that every 5000 years a great evil threatens civilization and only 5 elements can stop it. Flash forward to the future where a cab driver named Korbin Dallas runs into a strange alien lady who is essentially the fifth element and must be escorted to retrieve four stones to be used to save the world. Obviously that is the condensed version and no doubt part of the reasons it didn't become a gigantic blockbuster at the box office could no doubt be attributed to audience apprehension to a rather non-traditional plot (the other main factor is a little movie called Titanic came out the same year and pretty much overshadowed everything else in the multiplexes).


However The Fifth Element is a solid sci-fi film with some wonderful characters from Willis's dead pan protagonist who keeps having trouble find him to Chris Tuckers over the top off the wall spazz Ruby Rhod to Gary Oldman's hilarious villain Zorg. Visually it's stunning with a mixture of Phillip K. Dick type imagery crossed with a dark Blade Runner type future. Director Luc Besson is very good at juggling intense moments with comedy, along with constructing fast paced action sequences. Last but not least it is a wholly original film that is not your stereotypical cookie cutter studio film and I'm sure will become a classic in it's own right given time.

What follows is my favorite scene...(and yes I have it memorized):

-Astroboy