You know what stinks about the apocalypse? Everybody is so grumpy after it. When your main concern is survival instead of getting that new BMW, your mood can sour notably. Another thing that can sour your mood is viewing this movie. By the time you are done you will feel like the apocalypse has come, gone, and ran you over one more time for good measure.
The plot for Babylon A.D. is very simple. A shady character whose real intentions are unknown hires the “best in the business” to take something from point A to point B. You don’t know why the Vin Diesel’s character (Toorop) has been hired to take Melanie Thierry (Aurora) from Russia to America. You quickly find out that the girl is not all that she appears. The first clue is that she is being pursued by various factions which are all willing to kill to see their goals met. The second clue is that she begins to display superhuman abilities. Political/religious intrigue abounds and of course Riddick…errrr Toorop, just wants to live his own life and be left alone. Will he shrug off his tough guy persona, and manage to find what’s left of his humanity? Can the tender young girl he was paid to protect break the ice around his heart? You already know these answers, so I’m not going to bother answering them for you. There is not much positive to be said for this movie, but I’m going to try anyways.
It can be a difficult thing to create a movie world. You need to draw the audience in, and make them feel like the world that they are watching could exist. I don’t care what you say, the Star Wars universe is real, and George Lucas gave us ample proof in Chapters IV, V, and VI. The same goes for the world in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I walked out of the movie theater expecting to fight off orcs on the way to my car. It’s not just the huge sprawling sets, and big budget special effects that do this. It’s the little touches. The fashion, the weapons, the manner of speech, all these things make you believe a world is real. Babylon A. D. does look like a possible future, when you get to the details. Sure much of it is contrived, but there where little touches that made me think somebody TRIED to get things right. Imagine a piece of paper that behaved like Google Maps. All you have to do is touch a section and it will zoom in or out. You can also scroll using your finger. People starving for food are willing to eat almost anything, even Fluffy and Sparky, their childhood pets. Religions and corporations run the world. These are things that I actually thought could happen, and they were executed in a semi-convincing manner.
Like 10 pounds of poop in a 5 pound bag, this movie was overflowing with crap. The script was terrible. The acting wasn’t god-awful, but not even Michelle Yeoh could deliver all of her lines with the normal amount of grace that she usually carries. The movie was filled with far too many clichés to make it suspenseful. The fight scenes were too close up, meaning that either Mathieu Kassovitz did not know how to direct the scenes, or the choreography wasn’t good enough to be shown at a proper distance. It has been rumored that over 30 minutes of footage was left on the editing floor, suggesting that either the movie was unwatchable, or a great deal of story had to be sacrificed to get the movie down to a pre-arranged time. I would think both are the truth. I know that this movie was filtered down from a novel called Babylon Babies, and much of the story had to be dumbed down for Hollywood. However in this day and age, I don’t think that is a valid excuse. When you have stories that are epic, a budget must be created accordingly. Nobody wins when you try to make a 10 dollar sandwich with 1 dollar materials. While some aspects of the general story had potential, there are such huge gaps in the plot that the movie sometimes doesn’t make sense. Characters will change their motivation in the blink of an eye, when it should have been done over several scenes. Kassovitz was not happy with the final product. He said the film was “pure violence and stupidity” and that “parts of the movie are like a bad episode of 24″. It seems he finally got something right about the movie.
I’m not sure if this movie stinks because of the bad editing, bad writing or bad directing. At this point it doesn’t matter. Who cares? This train wreck would not have been spared if 1 of those things were fixed. All 3 needed to be much better to make this thing watchable. I know, I know, you are a Vin fan. Let me tell you something. Save your money, and go buy a Riddick action figure. Go buy the limited edition of The Pacifier. Go to the movies and picket this movie. Just don’t watch it. The minor things it does right do not help this thing become a even mildly entertaining move.
Kryos’ Rating: 2 Riddick-Wannabes out of 5!
