I thought Brion James was fantastic in The Fifth Element because he's one of the few slapstick outlets. He comes off as sorta military-scary, and ends up frozen like a Looney-Tunes popsicle in the freezer a few minutes later , and dead-pan military is a kind-of-funny partner to Corbin being an outlaw bachelor. He then remains the dead-pan receiver of abuse from the president, etc.

I agree about Harrison Ford, though I don't know who would've done it better at that moment in history.

aside : The Fifth Element is considered to be one of the noisiest distracting sci-fi movies ever, so to hear your main distraction was Brion James made me grin.