![]() ![]() While there is nothing wrong with mixing tried-and-true story forms and whipping them into an entertaining and appealing scenario, screenwriters Besson and Robert Mark Kamen have put together a hyper-busy, threadbare and, ultimately, incoherent narrative that reduces The Fifth Element to the skimpy proportions of a fashion show for designer Jean-Paul Gaultier’s haute couture stitchings. In this case, he’s not the son of a desert-area farmer but a 23rd-century cab driver named John McClane, er, Korben Dallas. As usual, the more complicated the story, the more simplistic the conflict, and, once again, it’s the same special effects story, a battle between good and evil.Īnd, true to mythic form, the savior of the world is a rather unlikely chap. ![]() Undeniably, co-writer and director Besson has embarked on an ambitious, big-screen mission here and has spliced together story elements from a number of sci-fi or adventure forms. Unwittingly, Gaumont has served up a messy U.S.-style blockbuster movie, which, as we are constantly reminded by the xenophobic cineastes of the French embargo crowd, is a culturally corrupting influence. It’s so chaotically clamorous that one fears its bombastic shock waves may have already caused the greats of French cinema (from Melies to Truffaut) to turn over in their graves. While one can understand that the Cannes Film Festival bends over backward to program a French film for opening night, this Luc Besson project is a generally dimwitted generic monstrosity of misconnected gadgetry and soulless techno-gunk.
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