Starring:	Bruce Willis	123min
	Mila Jovovovich
	Gary Oldman	1997
	Ian Holm
Screenplay:	Luc Besson	Sci-fi
Director:	Luc Besson	Colour

Region	2 (French)	Studio:	Gaumont
Format	Single Sided, Single Layer	Subtitles	English
			French
Aspect ratio	2.35:1		Spanish
Anamorphic	Yes	Extra Features	Poster gallery
			Biographies
Soundtracks	Dolby Digital 5.1
	French Dolby Digital 5.1	Case type	Amaray
	Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0

The DVD * * 1/2		The Movie * *
Another Anglo-friendly release from French studio Gaumont, this contains one of the most breathtaking soundtracks you'll find anywhere. Make sure you don't turn the LF up too loud, 'cos this movie will break stuff, it really will. From the opening atmospheric rumbles to the closing set-piece, this is top flight demo material all the way. A pity that it's yet another disc to be cursed by a sync problem. This all-too-common rubber-lipped blemish is thought to be connected to running the film at 25fps for a European title as opposed to the States, which runs at 24fps. The worst stretch is at around 15-30 minutes in, with another at around 80, but overall the slip is relatively minor. Again, this is proved only on a Panasonic A100 - unsure if it is a universal problem. Picture quaility is a little strange. Initially, things look superb - clearly this is an absolutely magnificent print. But a closer peer reveals a lot of artifacts, similar to many of the Disney releases, with a kind of a weave all over everything. It is extraordinary how these seemingly obvious blemishes simply disappear when sitting at a normal viewing distance - subjectively, it looks excellent. As with Leon, on-screen titles are in French, as is the title on the box - Le Cinquieme Element. Again, subtitles are optional. There are a couple of extras thrown in to keep you amused for five minutes, all in English or multi-language, and the scene index booklet also has an English language version. Overall, if you are a sci-fi fan with a monster sound set up, this will be one you won't want to be without.		The most expensive movie ever filmed in Britain, it says here. Not the most expensive script though, of course. It's Judge Dredd without the plot. After a very promising wierdy Egyptian prologue involving some pteroglyophs and some odd looking aliens, we are hurled into 23rd century Manhattan, about to be wiped out - along with the rest of the world - by some generic form of ultimate evil. It's all got something to do with finding a suitcase full of four "magic stones" and a strange, scantily clad goddess (Jovovovich), but it boils down to a dull taxi driver (Willis) elisting the services of a dull priest (Holm), and then finding himself persued by a dull baddie (quelle surprise, Oldman). This is a strange film - it's starts quite intriguingly and sensible, but as it goes on it passes tongue-in-cheek, slips through farce and damn near ends up as slapstick. Eventually, with composer Eric Serra's comedic clarinet helping you guess when yuou're meant to laugh, you find yourself expecting Sid James and Hattie Jaques to start running up and down the corridors firing lasers at each other. With the sound mixer showing admirable restraint in not dubbing on the sound of a train going off the rails, it's hard to believe it's the same film you started watching 90 minutes earlier. And it's not nearly such a good one. Although director Besson has tried to create something visually unique, he fails to convice us that this is a real universe, rather the product of a lot of self-conscious heads of department. The set design looks like set design, the costumes from Jean Paul Gaultier look like costumes, and the visual effects (at least in 23rd century New York) look like visual effects - for all the hype, it looks like a CD-ROM of Blade Runner on a dry day. More seriously, the script - based on a childhood idea by Besson, apparently - just can't make up it's mind what it wants to be, in the end plumping for the easiest option of zero plot while allowing the volume to be turned up to eleven. As the film limps to its weary conclusion with a camp irritating broadcaster (Rock) shouting over the carnage, we can only be grateful that much of the obscene amount of money spent on this pile of kack landed on home ground. Now we know why the teaser trailer didn't tell us anything - there was nothing to tell.