Babylon A.D.

Were Babylon A.D. merely just a bad sci-fi movie, I could just brush it off. But Babylon A.D. isn't just bad, it is inept. It is also sloppy, ugly to look at, poorly acted, and looks like it's been edited with a hacksaw. It's been well documented that co-writer and director Mathieu Kassovitz (Gothika) clashed with the studio over final control of the film. This movie has all the earmarks of an out of control production that's been reshot and re-edited numerous times in a vain attempt to salvage a doomed project. The most glaring evidence? It's so-called climax and conclusion that seems to have a good 15 or 20 minutes cut out, and hardly manages to make any sense to begin with.

The movie is set in a non-specified time in the future, but it doesn't really matter. It's a post-apocalyptic world where half the planet looks like a gravel pit, and the other half looks like a video game recreation of the world Ridley Scott created in Blade Runner. Problem is, the movie spends so much time in the gray, rocky and ugly side of the world. If you're going to set your movie in a future, give us something to look at, not just a ghetto with a lot of people who look like they'd give their left leg for a hot shower and a warm meal. The movie doesn't even attempt to set up how the world got this way, or who the people are who inhabit it. We're just thrown directly into the life of a gruff mercenary with the unfortunate name of Toorop (Vin Diesel). He's approached by a fellow mercenary named Gorsky (Gerard Depardieu, slumming it up in a cameo) who wants Toorop to do a job for him. The job involves going to Russia where he must transport a young girl named Aurora (Melanie Thierry) and her guardian named Sister Rebekah (Michelle Yeoh, who should have cut her losses after The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor) to New York.

Why is Aurora so special that she needs a mercenary to protect her? From what I can gather from the badly butchered screenplay, she's a genetically engineered girl that a religious cult wants to use as their Messiah, so that they can become the dominant religion in the world. Her guardian, Rebekah, has always known there was something strange about the child, but doesn't know what she truly is, since she's been raising her since she was abandoned at her doorstep. At one point, she tells Toorop that Aurora was able to speak by the age of two...in twenty nine different languages (and yes, that's exactly how she says it, complete with the dramatic pause). You'd think a girl who could speak twenty nine languages by the age of two would be kind of hard to keep a secret, but somehow Rebekah has managed keep her locked away from the world. Now that Aurora is out in the open, the cult is trying to hunt her down, as well as another group which is led by a mysterious man who has a lot of robotic parts covering his body. Maybe at one point this movie made sense, but in the studio's mad desire to keep the movie around 90 minutes, the story has been slaughtered beyond almost all comprehension so that no one seems to play any major role, and the plot seems to be flying by the seat of its pants.

Watching Babylon A.D. is a lot like trying to put a puzzle together with 80% of the pieces missing. Character motives are rarely hinted at, and often not even explained at all. Why does Toorop start to warm up and become so protective of Aurora? The movie only gives us bits and pieces. What is this evil religious cult trying to track the girl down? Heck if the movie knows, or even cares. These are but vague ideas for it to throw out, fooling us into thinking it is going somewhere, only to ignore it for long periods of time, or not even bother to bring them up again. I actually forgot the cult played a part in the story, since they disappear for almost the length of the entire movie after they're introduced. This is something you don't want your villains to do in your action film. Speaking of the action, it's unfocused and edited in a spastic fashion to rival last weekend's Death Race. If you're going to cast Michelle Yeoh in your movie, let us get a good glimpse at her fighting before you cut away to your next image.

I'm willing to blame most of the movie's problems due to the fact that the studio interfered way too much. But, Kassovitz cannot escape all of the blame. He is, after all, responsible for directing these performances up on the screen. Vin Diesel talks in a constant mumble of a slurred voice, making him sound like he's recovering from a hangover rather than a trained mercenary. His sluggish movements, combined with the fact that he looks like he'd rather be anywhere but in the movie he's in, make him someone to pity, not someone we can cheer. In playing the young Aurora, Melanie Thierry's main direction seems to have been to stare off into space and look mysterious. Due to the film's fragmented and butchered tone, no one gets to stand out or even do anything worthwhile. You get the feeling that everyone would have been better off staying at home. Given the wooden performances on display, I think half the cast was thinking the same thing.

Babylon A.D. has not been screened for critics, and is being released on Labor Day weekend, a notorious weekend for stinkers. These signs should have been warning enough, but this is such a poorly constructed movie, it actually surprised me by how misguided it was. Someone must have believed in this project at one point, because it's out there. Whatever that something was, it didn't make it into the final product. I'd say maybe it got cut out during the massive editing period, but what I did see of the movie didn't want to make me see more of it. 90 minutes of this was enough.

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