Babylon Ad (2008)

"...[a] highly effective, highly charged action movie...  Andrew L. Urban, Urban Cinefile
"...well acted, briskly paced and consistently clear...  Maitland McDonagh, TV Guide
"...one of the most thoughtfully designed post-apocalypse futures put on film in years.  Tim Brayton, Antagony & Ecstasy

Editor's Note In sci-fi thriller BABYLON A.D., Vin Diesel's Toorop is an antihero who quotes the best of cinema's bad boys from films such as THE GODFATHER and SCARFACE. But all the tattooed muscleman really wants to do is leave poverty- and violence-ridden Russia and return to his family's home in upstate New York. However, he has been banned from his native America, so when a Russian mobster (a prosthetic-enhanced Gérard Depardieu) offers him a job and a forged passport that will take him back home, he agrees, even though the mission seems close to suicide. He takes a strangely gifted orphan named Aurora (Melanie Thierry) from a Mongolian convent to Harlem, his only help being a nun--though it is a nun played by action star Michelle Yeoh. Thugs attack them on every leg of their journey, following them as they take car, train, sub, and snowmobile to ensure Aurora's safety. BABYLON A.D works best when it's revealing facets of its futuristic world, from the refugee-camp look of Russia to the high-tech gloss of a 22-million-people-strong New York City. Production designers Sonja Klaus and Paul Cross, as well as director Mathieu Kassovitz (GOTHIKA), deserve praise for creating settings that evoke memories of dystopian films from BLADE RUNNER to CHILDREN OF MEN. Kassovitz, who is most familiar to audiences as the object of affection in AMELIE, also adapted the script from the Maurice G. Dantec novel BABYLON BABIES with Eric Besnard. The book weighed in at over 500 pages, so there are times when it feels like something is missing in BABYLON A.D. with its brief 90-minute run time. In small roles, Depardieu and French favorite Charlotte Rampling (who plays a mysterious religious leader) provide substance and gravitas.

	Melanie Thierry
	Charlotte Rampling
	Vin Diesel
	Gérard Depardieu
	Michelle Khan
	Mark Strong
	Jerome Le Banner
	Lambert Wilson
	Thierry Arbogast - Director of Photography
	The RZA - Music
	Shavo Odadjian - Music
	Ilan Goldman - Producer
	Avram Butch Kaplan - Executive Producer
	Atli Orvarsson - Composer
	Maurice G. Dantec - Source Writer
	Benjamin Weill - Editor
	Mathieu Kassovitz - Screenwriter
	Eric Besnard - Screenwriter
	Sonja Klaus - Production Designer
	Paul Cross - Production Designer
	David Valdes - Executive Producer
	Mathieu Kassovitz - Director

Reel.com 5 of 10
In the movie critic handbook (yep, we all get one), there are certain assured signs that a movie is going to tank and tank hard. Sometimes, all it takes is a name over a marquee (Rob Schneider!). In other instances, the format (Epic Movie, Scary Movie, etc.) foreshadows the flop 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 P.R. 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 never doubt that tome again...It's never entertaining, not even in an oversized ridiculousness or cheesy schlock sort of way. Instead, it just starts and then sinks like a stone...Visually, Babylon A.D. borrows from the post-post-modern end of the world look. That means that skyscrapers are dressed up in silly CGI neon, while the Czech Republic is made to look even blander and more bombed out. There is no rhyme or reason to this version of the world, Kassovitz complaining that suit-mandated cuts cleared out all his carefully planned context. After viewing this truncated take however, there aren't enough cutting room scraps to reconfigure the resulting apocalypse. All excuses aside, this is one time when audiences will wish the world ended sooner. A lot sooner. - Bill Gibron

ReelViews 5 of 10
Babylon A.D. has the look and feel of a skeleton: an unfinished outline that whooshes by so fast that it becomes incomprehensible as its storyline and characters are lost in a flurry of fast cuts and poorly choreographed action sequences. The film is frustrating because there are instances of genuine visual flair (such as the futuristic New York) and times when one senses there might be ideas worth exploring (the roles of corporate sponsorship and religion in the new order). Alas, this is a case of a potentially epic tale being pruned and diced to the point where its underlying ideas are reduced to trite cliches. The lackluster acting and horrendous dialogue don't help. And it says a lot about Babylon A.D. that director/co-writer Mathieu Kassovitz has made some damning statements about the theatrical version of the production that indicate he is unwilling to endorse the final cut...Kassovitz is a competent director who has made some workmanlike films (although his previous effort and English-language debut, Gothika, left a little to be desired), so his condemnation of the movie carries some weight. Whether things would have been better had the studio not gotten out the shears and trimmed some 15 minutes is impossible to tell, although it's doubtful that restoring the lost footage would have transformed Diesel's lackluster performance or made the central conceit less ludicrous. Maybe Kassovitz's vision will be restored on DVD. Until then, all we have to judge is the theatrical cut, and it's not worth the celluloid it's printed on. - James Berardinelli