The Fifth Element: What an odd movie!
Talk about weird: On the recommendation of a friend, we rented The Fifth Element from Netflix, and watched it last night.
What a bizarre movie! It’s a 1997 sci-fi action/comedy, starring Bruce Willis as a 23rd-century flying taxi driver, Gary Oldman as a corrupt businessman, Ian Holm as a priest, Chris Tucker as a talk-show host, and Milla Jovovich as an orange-haired “perfect being.”
The non-stop action is a bizarre mixture of Stargate (1994), Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones (2002), Die Hard (1988) and Rush Hour (1998). Visually, the movie’s New York City seems very similar to George Lucas’s Correscant… which appeared five years later.
The Fifth Element’s story is hard to follow, and the characters are 100% strange. It’s worth renting, if you’re in the mood for something different. Very different.
I love that film!
It flopped pretty badly… it was marketed terribly, as an action film… the people marketing it must never have watched it.
5th Element is one of the all-time coolest movies, and an underground classic. Completely unexpected again and again — amazing characters, imaginative everything, that spectacularly weird woman, and the ending almost brings a tear to your eye because it’s so sweet and unexpected in that context.
I own a copy and watch it once or twice a year, just for the exuberance!
–mac mccarthy
One of the great sci-fi futuristic films of all time. Had no idea you hadn’t seen it else I’d have pushed you to it much sooner. Great film, right from the opening scene…
Now you will know why people say “supergreen” when you do something good 😉
For the anecdote, it is the first DVD I bought. In fact, at that time, I bought my first DVD player just to watch this movie!
I will not elaborate on my theory about the universe and the cosmic divide between people who like the 5th Element or hate the 5th Element.
Bzzzzz!
Strange? Yes. Fun? Definitely 😉
It’s on all my hard drives… and I watch it at least once a month.
So amazing, more details at each viewing…
My #1 movie… in over 50 years of movie watching…