Babylon A.D. (2008)

So I headed down to the local theater and figured why not. I had heard that the film wasn't any good, and though the film is a bit uneven, and nonsensical I kind of enjoyed it. It isn't a great piece of cinema but it has its moments. Vin Diesel does his best, and you can see he isn't challenged too much by the material. I heard the director Mathieu Kassovitz is even talking bad about this film. He explains about studio interference & studio lawyers getting in the way.

Truthfully I didn't mind it. The movies is a sci-fi action adventure. The story is somewhat interesting, and what I really liked about the film was the atmosphere. Kassovitz paints a bleak future, and somewhat mirroring the future in a film called "Children of Men". I'm sure there are some interesting outtakes that the studio cut, and maybe we'll see those in the DVD release of the film, but as for now the film doesn't suffer too much from it.

The film is about a mercenary played by Vin Diesel named Toorop. He is hired by a Rusian crime lord Gorsky played by an almost unrecognizable Gerard Depardieu to smuggle a girl named Aurora (Melanie Thierry) from a Mongolian convent to New York.

Along for the ride is Michelle Yeoh as one of the convent's sisters. The film does all the ABC's of an action film. Everything is thrown at our hero's but the kitchen sink, and they survive against all the odds.

I felt that there was material that was left out due to the length of the film. Vin Diesel's character makes the leap into believing in Aurora too quickly for my tastes. After all he is a mercenary whose seen his share of the wicked world. His belief in Aurora comes a bit too quick, but I feel that some of the directors explanation for this has been cut. Like I said before maybe we'll have to wait for the DVD release to find out if they'll include it.

All in all it wasn't too bad. From what I'm hearing a lot of people didn't like it, and there are only a few critics who seem to like it. The studio (Fox) dropped this film without reviews or screenings for critics, so it shows how much faith they have in this film. Had this film been made a few years ago I'm sure it would have a BIG powerful studio backing with it's marketing department right behind it. But in a world where the Iron Man's & batman's reign this picture doesn't have much of a chance. If I was the director I would be more pissed at how the studio is treating this film then it's others.

To round it up. The film is okay, and I did like the atmosphere. Vin Diesel does his best, and he makes it work onscreen. Not worth going out of your way for, but you could do worse.