In the colorful future, a cab driver unwittingly becomes the central figure in the search for a legendary cosmic weapon to keep Evil and Mr Zorg at bay. He finds himself battling an evil force during an apocalyptic war as he tries to secure a mysterious fifth element.
Korben Dallas: We need to find the leader, Mangalores won't fight without the leader.
Aknot: One more shot, and we start killing hostages!
Korben Dallas: That's the leader.
Aknot: Send someone to negotiate.
Fog: [as Dallas looks at him] Uh, I-I've never negotiated before.
Korben Dallas: Do you mind if I try?
Fog: No, sure, sure, sure.
[shouts]
Fog: We're sending somebody in to negotiate!
[Corben walks into the room and shoots Aknot between the eyes. As he falls, the other Mangalores drop their weapons and bow over him, keening]
Korben Dallas: Anybody else want to negotiate?
Fog: Wh-where did he learn to n-negotiate like that?
President Lindberg: [looking at General Munro] I wonder.
The Diva - LIVE at Fhloston Paradise! From the movie, The Fifth Element. All sounds from the Diva Dance performance. Icons from Blue Sky Heart Graphics. Source: Ezthemes Size: (3430 Kb)
Here, I had thought to myself as I watched a television spot for THE FIFTH ELEMENT, may be the acme in hyperbolic idiocy. In one of those exclamation point-filled critical blurbs which tend to accompany pre-release advertising, someone was touting THE FIFTH ELEMENT as "STAR WARS for the 90s." I could only shake my head, especially considering it had only been a few months since we had actually seen STAR WARS for the 90s. Then I saw THE FIFTH ELEMENT, and I was forced to acknowledge that, in a perverse way, the statement was completely accurate. Like STAR WARS, THE FIFTH ELEMENT is essentially a fairy tale, an archetypal Good Vs. Evil story dressed up in high-tech trappings. And like many films of the 90s, it's so busy and loud that the compelling elements in the story tend to get lost.