The Fifth Element Blu-ray Review

• 30th May 2011

Luc Besson’s wonderfully over the top 1997 science fiction fantasy comes to hi-def Blu-ray in what seems like a long overdue official region 2 release.

Some readers may recall that this amazing yet polarising movie has in fact had two former releases in the Blu-ray format – both officially region 1 but actually region-free and available to UK customers through the usual online retailers. The June release of the first official region 2 version however sees the movie 100% available for the first time in the high street.

Let’s see how it fares…

First a brief recap. The film stars Bruce Willis, Milla Jovovich, Ian Holm and Gary Oldman with a great supporting cast including Chris Tucker, Lee Evans, the late great Brion James, Luke Perry and err… British trip-hop artist Tricky. Plus a wealth of incredibly glamorous model types, bodybuilders and quasi-recognisable fashionistas. Everyone also remembers that the costumes were all designed by Jean-Paul Gaultier.

In a nutshell (although knowing me, it’ll be a fairly substantial nutshell), Jovovich plays supreme being and fifth ‘element’ Leeloo, who’s tasked with saving humanity from a mysterious ultimate evil which is travelling to earth in the form of a huge planet-shaped dark matter sphere (but it also talks to baddie industrialist Zorg (Oldman) on the phone using the pseudonym ‘Mr Shadow’… weird!).

Willis is the washed up ex-special forces hero who drives a cab and ends up falling in love with and helping Leeloo perform her special role of saving the Earth. Holm’s character is a holy man charged with seeing that Leeloo meets her planet-saving destiny. Lots of fun and adventure ensues while our heroes, hampered every step of the way by Zorg’s forces and later Zorg himself (plus other ‘interested’ bad alien guys too), try to secure the four other ‘elements’ (in the form of four ceremonial stones) and perform the ritual that will see the great evil extinguished. It’s awesome!

My first thoughts when beginning to watch the Blu-ray were that it seemed a little noisy. The movie starts in Egypt and one or two exterior shots had that grainy ‘digital zoom’ look about them, but this settled down pretty quickly (and I didn’t notice any more shots like these throughout the rest of the film). I wouldn’t say it was the best, most jaw-dropping Blu-ray I’ve ever seen, but it’s clean, dense and rich in its handling and presentation of what is arguably an incredibly busy and colour-rich, design-focused movie.

My only concern really, is the usual complaint when movies of yesteryear get the hi-def treatment; that some special effects shots suffer from being ‘too’ detailed. Model miniatures, matte paintings, traveling mattes, key framing, rotoscoping, rear and front projection techniques – all of these can lose their once convincing quality by dint of the super high definition they can now be scrutinised in. In the case of The Fifth Element, much of the traditional model work and matte paintings really do look ‘old’ – plus somewhat unexpectedly the once amazing looking huge Mondoshawan alien suits really don’t pass muster in hi-def. Today, those guys would probably be CGI creations (and not necessarily the better for it), but it’s a shame that the suits suffer so much in the hi-def spotlight.

The sound is perfectly decent, although there didn’t seem to be a bog standard stereo option for those not fortunate enough to own surround systems. Those that do get Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1. I found the sound mix to be acceptable in all but a couple of the scenes introducing Tucker’s character (Ruby Rhod) had some slightly strange things going on. This is possibly due to the Tucker dialogue being part of the music track while Willis’s responses are not, but hey, it’s just a small point.

Disc extras are OK, if not scintillating. We get some fairly in-depth conception and production documentaries (although these aren’t new) which include talking head bits from Besson, Willis, Jovovich, Tucker, etc. plus a decent production FX commentary. Personally I would have liked a director and principal cast talk track and a good retrospective doc at this stage.

Overall I think this is a worthwhile package, and probably deserves to replace your old DVD copy (even the deluxe issue). But it could have gone a lot further towards feeling like an absolute ‘must have’ buy.

As a massive fan of the movie, I will of course buy the region 2 Blu for my collection, but it’ll be with a slight sense of feeling short-changed in the bells and whistles department. Of course if it turns out that the retail release features a second disc with more funky extras, I’ll be a very very happy chappie and you can ignore that last bit.

For a more in depth look at this awesome movie, please look out for Filmwerk’s retrospective coming soon (Editor’s note – around July 11^th).

Ben Pegley