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Babylon A.D. Review
The near future is a dark place and when a mercenary called Toorop takes a job that involves transporting a girl he picks off more than he can chew. This is the world of Babylon A D, directed by Mathieu Kassovitz who later slammed the studio who he believes has massacred his movie, which was a labour of love over many years and stars Vin Diesel, Mélanie Thierry and Michelle Yeoh.
I’m just going to keep this review short I think, even thinking about this movie makes me kind of angry about the time I spent on it. Babylon A.D. is a sci fi movie set in the year 2019 and I believe is most similar in story to the 2006 movie Children of Men. That movie however actually has characters, they had history and we could relate to them. Babylon A.D. has none except far fetched figures whose motivations are never revealed, and are lacking any traits that the average movie watcher will relate too. The story skips along at breakneck speed with no explanations and no reason to keep you eyes on the screen except for the vast array of set pieces pretty backdrops and cute special effects. Put simply its a mess, its missing a story it just pounds along dumping line after line of badly written and badly delivered tosh at you, and when it finally gets to explaining it at the end, we don’t give a damn and even if we did its so badly played and staged that its almost silly. This is not a movie for adults or fans of science fiction.
Hopefully Mathieu Kassovitz who has a great visual style about his films will be able to get the control he wants in his next movie and deliver a little more story. Babylon A.D. could have been a decent movie, as it stands though, the studio appears to have cut it down to a bare minimum of action scenes pushed back to back. While this does make the movie hard to follow and annoying it does make sure the pain is over quickly. Talk of a directors cut has been thrown about with abandon, even if it happens I doubt I’ll watch it.
