In the movie critic handbook (yep, we all get one), there are certain assured signs that a flick is going to armored combat vehicle and tank hard. Sometimes, all it takes is a name over a marquee (Rob Schneider!). In other instances, the format (mindless Movie lampoon) foreshadows the fizzle sweat. Perhaps the surest indication of some certified crap comes from the studio itself. When they fail to screen a film before it opens, even cancelling pre-planned previews to avoid that deadliest of PR pariahs (bad word of mouth), you know you�re in trouble. After the 90 soulless minutes that make up Mathieu Kassovitz's Babylon A.D., you'll ne'er doubt that tome again.
Toorop (Vin Diesel) is a mercenary chartered by an old ally, Gorsky (Gerard Depardieu) to transport a young young woman named Aurora (M�lanie Thierry) from Eastern Europe to New York City. In the trigger-happy, dystopic existence which is the future, she inevitably someone with Toorop's skills as a smuggler. Along with Sister Rebeka (Michelle Yeoh), the trio mustiness traverse crowded train depots, perilous perimeter checkpoints, a trip aboard an old Soviet sub, and a snowmobile ride across a security drone-policed arctic tundra. Once they arrive in America, Toorop finally discovers the role of his mission. Aurora is either carrying a deadly disease� or the new messiah. In either case, the evil High Priestess (Charlotte Rampling) will stop at nothing to get her hands on them.
More inert than ar gas and given over to obvious directorial hissy fits, Babylon A.D. is like a bad aspiration a cyberpunk once had after observance Find Me Guilty. Featuring the uniformly emotionless Diesel in an array of pale prison house tattoos, and a unhappily wasted Yeoh as the mandatory voice of reason, this attempted epic by La Haine/Gothika guide Kassovitz is an unsalvageable, unlikable mess. It's never entertaining, not fifty-fifty in an oversized absurdity or cheesy schlock sorting of means. Instead, it just starts, and and then sinks like a stone before gimp over the finish logical argument. Recent net buzz has followed the filmmaker's abject frustration with the agency Fox meddled with his movie. He claims the calamity is all their fault. After seeing the shockingly poor way Kassovitz worked with what he at least had to start with, the studio can shun a decent percentage of the blame.
Casting is crucial to making this kind of material work, and Diesel is no future warrior. Instead, his Toorop often comes across like a chucker-out after a particularly bad night. Unable to register even the smallest sum of money of complexity, the bulb-shaped badass singlehandedly sucks the life out of every scene he is in -- included the anaemic action. Thierry is regular worse. As the plot's potential Mary (Typhoid or Virgin), she's a whiny, wounded short brat. When we're introduced to her, she's supposed to be wide-eyed and innocent. By the end, she's so smug and self-righteous we can't wait for her moment of martyrdom. In between tantrums aimed at showing how salient she is, Kassovitz treats her like a prop -- necessary for the narration but lacking any reason for empathy or concern.
Visually, Babylon A.D. borrows from the post-post-modern end of the creation look. That means that skyscrapers are dressed up in slaphappy CGI neon, while the Czech Republic is made to appear even blander and more than bombed out. There is no rhyme or grounds to this version of the worldly concern, Kassovitz complaintive that suit-mandated cuts exonerated out all his carefully planned circumstance. After showing this truncated take however, there aren't enough cutting room food waste to reconfigure the resulting apocalypse. All excuses aside, this is one time when audiences will wish the earth ended sooner. A lot sooner.
The future ain't that bright, Vin.
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