Luc Besson's "The Fifth Element" might be the daffiest Hollywood sci-fi flick ever made (at least until Besson made the even daffier "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets" 20 years later). The film had movie-star insurance in Bruce Willis, and the trailers promised a surfeit of futuristic eye candy, but what exactly was this zany-looking movie about?

The film may be visually cluttered, but its premise is fairly simple. Every 5,000 years, a force of tremendous evil emerges out of space and tries to destroy Earth. Fortunately, an alien race known as the Mondoshawns and a clandestine religious order are in possession of the only weapon that can repel this evil. This weapon consists of four stones which represent the five classical elements of earth, wind, fire, water, and Philip Bailey. Actually, the fifth element is a humanoid named Leelo, and, as embodied by Milla Jovovich, she is a lethal warrior,...