Save the Planet.
Babylon A.D.
By Joseph Tan
Director: Mathieu Kassovitz
Starring: Vin Diesel, Michelle Yeoh, Gerard Depardieu, Melanie Thierry, Mark Strong, Charlotte Rampling
Official website: http://www.babylonadmovie.com/
You gotta feel sorry for Mathieu Kassovitz. First, the director spent five years nursing his pet project, an adaptation of the novel Babylon Babies by Maurice Georges Dantec. He even helmed the Halle Berry bomb Gothika in order to earn the money to fund the long development process. And then when he finally got a studio to back the project, he wasn't allowed to make it the way he wanted thanks to constant interference from studio execs and producers at every stage of production.
The movie sees Vin Diesel playing Toorop (worst name for an action hero ever), a mercenary who takes the job of escorting a woman named Aurora - who, as it turns out, is pregnant with twins who may or may not be the next Messiahs - from Eastern Europe to New York. Sounds remotely interesting? Not according to Kassovitz.
"Pure stupidity and violence" and "like a bad episode of 24" was how the French director, who first shot to prominence with his searing and incendiary debut feature La Haine, described his latest film. He isn't wrong. The source novel might have been complex in scope as Kassovitz claimed, and the adapted screenplay might have been nothing short of brilliant, but what ultimately made it to the screen is nothing more than a shambles.
The cast, made up of Michelle Yeoh, French cinema luminaries Gerard Depardieu and Charlotte Rampling, and Fast and the Furious meathead Vin Diesel, is highly competent, but there simply isn't enough story or character for them to work with. Anywhere between 15 to 70 minutes of footage was rumored to have been excised from the final cut - the result is a predictable, dumbed-down blockbuster made all the worst by the fact that it also has by far the most unsatisfying climax and resolution to be seen in a very long time.
It would have helped if, like other big, dumb movies, the big, dumb action sequences in this big, dumb action movie had been more entertaining. For this, Kassovitz has to shoulder some of the blame. All the action scenes look like they were shot by drunken monkeys with cameras strapped to their backs jumping from one perch to the next. My advice? Bring aspirin into the cinema with you - it's impossible not to come away with a headache.
The saddest thing about Babylon A.D. is, you can actually glimpse some clues that the film could have at least been a minor sci-fi cult classic. Kassovitz does very well with his depiction of this particular dystopia - the world of Babylon A.D. always feels immediate, and strongly rooted in our present-day reality. Harrowing scenes like the one involving a refugee-ferrying submarine do a good job of reminding audiences that this could possibly be the future we have to look forward to if our planet's leaders don't get their act together. Hopefully, Kassovitz will get his act together with the inevitable Director's Cut DVD, and we will get to see for ourselves what his vision of Babylon is really like.
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