Babylon A.D.

Baylon A.D. is, on the surface, a movie. Normally, when I write a review, I like to touch on the positives of a movie. The thing that make the movie worth watching, even if it's not very good overall. I'll do what I can for this one, but I warn you, it's not easy.

The first positive is that there's some interesting visuals throughout the movie. Honestly, some might disagree with me, but I think the set design was very good, and provides a great backdrop to the world we're supposed to be in, even if we really don't know what that world is. The action sequences are certainly... actiony, even if not very. Really, that's about as far as I can go, and I feel like I'm really pushing to do so. Honestly, when the Director / Producer / Writer comes out and pans the flick before it is even released, you almost have to expect that it will be absolutely terrible. (Especially when that Director is Mathieu Kassovitz, who also directed Gothika, which I didn't think much of either.)

Honestly, Kassovitz had a lot to say about this project. One of the more memorable quotes here is: "It's pure violence and stupidity. The movie is supposed to teach us that the education of our children will mean the future of our planet. All the action scenes had a goal: They were supposed to be driven by either a metaphysical point of view or experience for the characters... instead parts of the movie are like a bad episode of 24."

No, none of that came through at all. Not even a little bit. As a matter of fact, I can say, without any sarcasm or ire, this movie doesn't deliver a single message.

Vin Diesel is an experienced Mercenary by the name of Toorop who is recruited, by force, to escort a girl from Mongolia to New York. We're given that she's very valuable for some reason, but beyond that, we're left completely in the dark. He picks up the 'package', a twenty year old girl, and her 'guardian' from a convent in Mongolia. This is the extent of the entire first act.

What ensues from here is forty-five minutes of watching these people cross the world on a 6,000 mile journey, although we only really see 4 major points of this journey, which becomes the entire second act, and there's hardly anything compelling about it. As an example, this would normally be the time where some connection between the hard nosed mercenary and his young 'package' should be formed, but there's literally nothing there except a small amount of diatribe from her guardian which is neither illuminating, or interesting. During this time, the only real opposition comes from a group of people attempting to abduct the 'package' but only seem to be capable of doing so when she decides to go with them willingly (to meet her father), and when Toorop points a gun at them, she goes back to him, and the abductors run off without even looking back. Hardly what I would consider a tense situation. There's also a point when they cross the border when they are attacked by some sort of unmanned aerial drones, which are fairly easily eliminated by Diesel using only a handgun and a snowmobile.

Finally, we reach the third act, hungry for some kind of explanation, and it comes, but really, it doesn't make a lot of sense, nor is it in any way engaging. If, for some reason, you might be interested in trying to watch this movie, I'll not give away the details. I will say that it's an extremely disappointing act that ends in such a lackluster way that you almost feel like you've missed the end of the movie, even as the credits begin to roll. It's an ending so rushed that it feels as though it deserved another 30 minutes. Even then, those 30 minutes would only have served to make a bad movie seem at least mediocre.

Overall it was very frustrating, throughout the entire fiasco you feel like there's a rich story that is just screaming to be told. Normally, watching a decent movie adaptation will make me seek out the original novel, but in this case, the terrible movie adaptation is actually having the same effect. I imagine that Maurice G. Dantec's novel has to be at least marginally better than this atrocity.