Movie – The Fifth Element

Movie – The Fifth Element
Score : 7/10 
Year : 1997
Director: Luc Besson 
Cinematography: Thierry Arbogast
Music: Éric Serra
Country: France + USA 
Language: English (+scifi invented)
Duration: 2h06 

Writers: Luc Besson  (screenplay & story) ; Robert Mark Kamen (screenplay)


Full cast & team (IMDB) 


1914, Egypte. Archaeologists discover mysterious inscriptions within a temple, and attempt to decipher its content, when aliens arrive to collect the only weapon capable of defeating a  great evil that appears every 5,000 years. 

In 2263, some 300+ years later, this evil appears, and the quest to find this weapon and its components begins... 

Korben Dallas, a flying taxicab and former  major in the special forces is thrown into the adventure unwittingly when Leeloo crashes into his taxi and asks for help ; the safety of the Earth and Life itself are in peril. 

This movie is sci-fi and includes social messages through its direct viewpoint about the human race and war ; this aspect isn't hidden at all. Characters are rather exaggerated like a cartoon turned into life, with more or less success in the results. 

The view of the future full of high-tech gadgets and compacting a flat's element for multi-purpose tells us that this future's overpopulation has been such, that space is prime and humans still loving comfort, found ways to improve their tools. Some of these have been achieved in real life, others from the movie haven't yet. 

Éric Serra's musical score starts off very mellow and mysterious, follows into action themes, but, for me, becomes corny during the romantic portions. 

Cinematography is good but I wouldn't call it so excellent to be worth additional * in my review. 

The Fifth Element (French: Le Cinquième Élément) is an English-language movie, but French-American co-production; it showed some promise and several issues, in my view. 

• First of all,  it's VERY men-heavy on screen and in dialogues ; there are very few women who get any dialogues, and almost every single woman is sexually objectified, via scenes, outfits and double-entendre dialogues. 
• Secondly, the pacing is a bit disjointed, jumping from one point to another. 
• Thirdly, I never forget the fictional settings, nor that am watching actors ; Bruce Willis is still Bruce Willis, and the fictional invention of archaeological findings never immerses me. 

Rating : PG13 : scifi action, a bit of blood, sexual innuendo, brief nudity. 

Emet triggers: a character searches for an item in a place that may trigger ; it is actually off screen and not overly graphic, but its suggestion may be triggery. 

Stars :  Bruce Willis, Gary Oldman and Milla Jovovich, Chris Rock, Ian Holm, Brion James, et al.  

*****   

... In the media

There are far too many dvd and bluray editions to compare, so I'll direct you to the blu-ray.com (which includes a dvd section) to check them, depending on your country. 
Indeed, in France alone there are 5 dvd editions, 1 UMD & 1 BD... So, I'll tell you about my editions.

Before I do that, I'll mention to my readers that the BD edition, EAN 3607483163887 suffers from "bd-rot'' and that over time, you may have to call a special number and get it replaced from the manufacturer. Details in French here .

I first bought the UK tw-disc special (dvd) edition EAN 5060002832523, released by Pathé. It is zone 2, PAL. 

Its runtime is 2h01, resulting from the usual speedup issue in transference, but no scene has been cut as far as I know. 

Language & sound : English 5.1, dolby digital, and DTS. NO DUBS. 
Subtitles: only English for the hearing inmpaired (movie alone, not on the bonuses).

Features: 
Disc 1 : the movie, with scene access and interactive menue. 
Bonus : Visual effects audio commentary 
Disc 2 : Making of documentary. 4 featurettes (imagining, art of the fifth element ; 
an audiance with Diva Plavalaguna, Elements of style with Jean-Paul Gaultier) : 
Trailers and tv spots ; launching at Cannes MTV special ; poster gallery : The sixth element essay.  This disc has also interactive menus to navigate. 

Then, I bought the USA BD edition, EAN 043396150188. It is 1-disc. 
The sleeve says zone A, but after reading that it actually plays in the other zones as well, I had bought it, second hand, to avoid the aforementioned BD-rot of the French edition. 

Runtime is now full, 2h06 

Image: 2.31:1, 1920:1080p FULL HD 

Languages : English 5.1 (both PCM uncompressed, and dolby digital). French dub, also 5.1 and dolby digital 

Subtitles : Engish + for the hearing impaired ; French ; Chinese ; Portuguese ; Spanish & Thai. 

Features : 
seamless menu navigation (can navigate during the movie and not stop it) 
feature-length trivia fact track (in standard definition) 

Before accessing the movie, there is a 14 seconds animation for the bluray and contrary to almost all discs that I own, the legal announcements are seen only once you click on PLAY MOVIE (not on disc startup). There are 5 of them, you can  either suffer or fast forward (but not skip). 

Additionally, and perhaps this is the result of watching outside of USA, is that when clicking PLAY MOVIE, the menu disappears, replaced by a blank screen for a few 
seconds, and then those legal ones follow. 

Soundtrack : 

It exists on cd (about 20 editions), LP/vinyl (5 more) and even on cassette tapes (4 more), lasting about 1h03 and comprised of 26+1 bonus track that isn't in the movie. There are a few unofficial editions as well. 

Their order and duration is always constant ; most of the cd/Lp/cassette arts are identical, but a very few aren't the same at all. 

CD EAN 724384429026 released in the Netherlands is a special edition ; the tracks are the same, the art uses rather 4 of the elements in the movie ; the cd is supposedly multi-channel, and there are a few bonuses are offered as an interactive series of 4 tracks (interview with Besson, excerpts from the making off, picture from the movie, web access to the movie's website), BUT, a) these interactive tracks are compatible with obsolete windows versions 3.1 & 95, and b) I couldn't find a single website to see if this edition is even available, apart for discogs, where you'll also see all the editions. 


So, if you really like the soundtrack, you can get it anywhere, all the editions have the same exact music.