THE FIFTH ELEMENT
Starring Bruce Willis, Gary Oldman, Ian Holm, Milla Jovovich, Luke Perry
Director Luc Besson
Opens May 9
In the manhattan of A.D. 2259, high-rises soar to 600 stories, and the haves on top dump their garbage on the have-nots below. When traffic jams, it jams in three dimensions, since cars zip through the air along seemingly unmarked lanes. To relax, vacationers retreat to outer-space cruise ships that would dwarf the Titanic. And it will all be history without the titular element, which can and must save the universe from destruction.
Such baroque vision has not come cheaply — or quickly. Besson (The Professional) says he began writing The Fifth Element 22 years ago, when he was just 16 years old; it has finally arrived at a cost of more than $90 million. And while early screenings have yielded wildly mixed reactions (some say visionary, others say confusing), audiences will at least find Willis in familiar form. Despite a wardrobe that's more future Fire Island than action hero, Willis returns to his Die Hard mode as a cabbie who takes on a mercenary despot (Oldman) and joins forces with Jovovich (Return to the Blue Lagoon), who holds the key to the future and speaks in a beguiling gibberish of Besson's invention. (''Luc gave me a dictionary,'' says the actress, ''so I understood what I was talking about.'')
Besson fleshed out his ideas with help from French graphic-novel artists Jean-Claude Mezieres (who designed the cityscapes) and Jean ''Moebius'' Giraud (who created many of the space creatures). ''There was a conscious effort to create a complete image of the future,'' says special-visual-effects supervisor Mark Stetson, who coordinated the 225 effects shots. ''There's a distinct philosophical difference between Blade Runner and Fifth Element. This world is a lot more hopeful -- it's a creaky, cranky society that's still working even though it's gone through huge technological revolutions.''
Says Besson: ''The big movements of history — the 15th century's voyages of discovery, the 19th century's industrial revolution — influenced me a lot more than Star Wars, Brazil, or Blade Runner. In fact, I was on the same track as Plato, though I didn't even know it.'' In the era of the Event Movie, modesty is a thing of the past. UPSIDE The look. DOWNSIDE The plot.
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