Babylon A.D. Review

Posted by Jeremy Thomas on 08.31.2008

Sadly, the director was right on this one.

Directed by: Mathieu Kassovitz
Written by: Éric Besnard

Starring:
Vin Diesel - Hugo Cornelius Toorop
Mélanie Thierry - Aurora
Michelle Yeoh - Sister Rebecca
Lambert Wilson - Dr. Arthur Darquandier
Mark Strong - Finn
Gerard Depardieu - Gorsky
Charlotte Rampling - Noelite Priestess



Running Time: 90 minutes
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, language and some sexuality.

Babylon A.D. seems like a film project that was cursed from the get-go. The film, based on a novel by French author Maurice G. Dantec, was a passion project of director Mathieu Kassovitz. In 2005, after working for five years to develop the project, Kassovitz finally got financing from French film-making heavyweight StudioCanal and Twentieth Century Fox. After adapting the script with screenwriter Éric Besnard, Kassovitz got Vin Diesel for the lead role instead of the actor he wanted, Vincent Cassel. After a four-month delay, production got started and things got even worse. Uncooperative weather got in the way, Kassovitz clashed with the studio over creative decisions, and the film went way over budget and got weeks behind schedule. The production’s insurance company had to bail out the film to prevent 20th Century Fox from killing the movie. Eventually, Fox stepped in and took control of the film during the editing process. This angered Kassovitz so much that he came out publically against his own film, lambasting Fox and describing the final cut as “pure violence and stupidity" and that "parts of the movie are like a bad episode of 24." Even star Diesel was publicly astounded at the edits made to the film and the length it was shortened down to. Amidst all of this bad press, Fox has released Babylon A.D. this weekend unscreened to critics, hoping to bank on Diesel’s name and the bleak near-future motif to sell the film.

Diesel stars as Toorop, a mercenary in a vaguely-placed near-future part of Russia dubbed New Serbia. Toorop is holed up in an apartment while the area tears itself apart with civil war. When a special forces-like team busts in to drag him to Gorsky (Depardieu), a member of Russian mafia, Toorop barely bats an eye. Luckily for him, Gorsky isn’t after him for anything but a job. The job is to transport a girl named Aurora (Thierry) to New York, and the pay is too high for the mercenary to deny. Picking up the package in Mongolia and an ass-kicking nun named Sister Rebecca (Yeoh) in the process, Toorop starts to lead the duo on a perilous journey across the globe to the Big Apple. Unfortunately though, it’s not nearly as simple as it seems at first. Aurora is a girl in demand, as a cult known as the Neolites are the people who are behind everything, and their High Priestess (Rampling) has great hopes for her and her little cult—ones that may or may not bode well for everyone else.

The novel that Babylon A.D. is based on, Dantec’s Babylon Babies is a dystopian novel with a Nietzschian philosophy. Unfortunately, Kassovitz’s film doesn’t live up to that, becoming a convoluted mess of a movie that tries to be smart and just ends up looking dumber for it. It would be intensely interesting to see Kassovitz’s cut of the film as he seems to have had loftier goals then this, the final cut put together by 20th Century Fox. Heavy on CGI-influenced action and with the soul of the characters removed by the short running time, the movie never manages a cohesive tone or sensibility, preferring instead to dump action scene after action scene in front of the audience with what ends up looking like a weak version of Children of Men in between. This might be more acceptable if the action was Matrix-style revolutionary, but recent films such as Wanted, the Bourne films, and others do the action just as capably. The fight scenes—of which there are plenty—are certainly not bad, and are often the best part of the movie. It’s simply nothing we haven’t seen before, and the end result is a film that just seems like a rehash of better movies, and in the scope of near-future sci-fi, Babylon A.D. falls well short of the mark.

The acting is largely about as good as the film deserves, which is not much. Vin Diesel is a man who can act, at least serviceably enough for films like this. Films like Boiler Room and Find Me Guilty have shown that the man is capable of more than he’s shown to larger audiences. Unfortunately, he’s far more Xander Cage and Riddick during that character’s worst moments than anything else, and Diesel mostly seems to be treading water with this film. He growls his way through this film with a decidedly tired tone that makes him seem more exhausted then tormented the way Toorop is supposed to be. Michelle Yeoh and Mélanie Thierry are a little bit better as Rebecca and Aurora, but Yeoh seems extraordinarily out of place in this film, and Thierry simply seems too happy to be in a big budget film to realize what kind of a mess she’s in. Gerard Depardieu is even more out of place then Yeoh, wearing a prosthetic nose and mugging it up. The best work comes from Rampling as the High Priestess of the Neolites, providing some great moments but not staying around long enough.

All that being said, there are things to like about this movie. The action is serviceable, and Diesel does his usual quality action-star work. It’s certainly nice to see the man back to kicking ass after the lackluster Pacifier and the good but largely ignored Find Me Guilty, and gives one hope that Diesel might yet get his career back on track yet. Unfortunately, this is not the film to do it. As the credits roll and the audience gets up to go home, the realization starts to sink in that, much like Toorop is with his deal to deliver Aurora across the world, they’ve been sold something that is far from what it seems. And the end result is something less then satisfying.

The 411: Kassovitz has said in interviews that "I should have chosen a studio that has guts. Fox was just trying to get a PG-13 movie." Fox certainly did get their PG-13, and I can’t help but agree with Kassovitz on that first statement. I can’t say that a bold studio cut would have saved this film, as there are quite a few other problems—mostly, the miscasting, the Children of Men-like script and the seen-it-all-before feel that the movie gives off—but it certainly could have elevated this movie to something far more enjoyable. While far from the worst film of the summer, or even the worst sci-fi action film (The Clone Wars, I’m looking at you), Babylon A.D. is certainly a weak entry in the genre, one that hopefully will be redeemed some with a Director’s Cut DVD in our own near-future.

Final Score:  4.0   [ Poor ]