Babylon A.D.

Toorop is a "bad-ass" who does things in line with his chosen lifestyle. When he is "approached" by the shadowy but powerful Gorsky to transport a girl from his home in Russia across into New York (where he is wanted on charges) he accepts the job. He collects the angelic Aurora from an ancient monastery along with her guardian, Sister Rebeka and the journey begins. Many are the dangers ahead but soon Toorop realises that the greatest danger may be Aurora herself.

This film got roundly bad reviews and, if you manage to make it through 90 minutes then you will find out for yourself why that was the case – it is not something that the film hides from view. With any sort of "full world" sci-fi, the risk is always that your design of that world will make it look ridiculous and also lack any sort of logic as to why things would be that way. There is an element of that here but the bigger problem is much tighter to the core of the film – the story itself. The vast majority of the film is a journey where the dangers and the stakes are increasing at each step. We don't learn a lot as we go but for me there was enough to keep me going because I wanted to see where it was going. However as it reaches a point where things should start coming together and the "bigger picture" take over the narrative flow from all the running and shouting that it has been for the majority, well, well then it just falls apart.

Except "fall apart" is not the best description for it because really what happens is that it becomes incredibly tangled. Last week I had the pleasure of using two sets of tweezers and a very bright light to untangle a tiny silver necklace belonging to my partner – no part of it stood out as different, it took a lot of work to make sense of the different parts of this massive knotted ball of a chain and it took me ages to translate that knot into a chain again. I mention this because in a way this film is the same by the end because just where you want it to be coming together in a big way, all that happens is it becomes more knotted and more nonsensical. Sadly there is nobody working to make it anything other than this and the closest thing to a "chain" that we end up with is a horrible ending that feels like the makers holding their hands up and saying "Look, I think we all agree that we should probably just bring this whole thing to a close without any fuss and all go our separate ways. Sorry". Some who love this film (and there are some – there are always some) will explain it to you and help you see what you missed; this is never an easy conversation because even those defending the film have to work with their tweezers and such to pull sense out of it. And once they do – once you and I understand the plot and more or less what was going on, we will still be left with one undeniable fact – we still don't care.

Caring is the problem that occurs due to the terrible narrative. At the start I was interested as I was just starting out but, the more it went on, the less I cared. It didn't engage me or give me reasons to keep being interested and by the time the awful ending came round I simply didn't care enough to be angry by how little closure it gives the story. I'm not sure where the fault lies but I suspect it should be evenly spread. The script is poor and the delivery of that script is poor. The cast must have seen something better than I did because there are some solid names in here – certainly it wasn't a matter of "oh, Vin is on board? Sign me up then" because that ship has sailed. Diesel himself is his usual solid screen presence. I'm still not a fan but he can hold the attention and is physically imposing. I won't waste your time considering his performance outside of that but suffice to say that with the material as poor as it is, he had little chance anyway. Yeoh deserves better while Thierry seemingly has no idea what her character is, so she settles for just being irritating for most of the time. Rampling, Depardieu, Strong, Wilson and others all show their faces but nobody knows what they are doing and it all feels like everyone was hoping that the action and sci-fi spectacle would cover this.

Visually I did quite like the film even if some of the scenes are unconvincing "near-future" clichés such as the club which is all scaffolding and violence (but yet rammed) or massive explosions for no real reason. Overall though Babylon A.D. is a mess. It has your bangs and your tough swaggering but it is not big or fun enough to just get by on that. Indeed by its own hand it puts a lot of pressure on the plot to drive the film and then delivery at the end – neither of which it does. It starts simple and gets more and more tangled and then, as a final scene, you are presented this knotted mess and expected to say "thanks". The only saving grace is, by the time that happens, you will probably care so little about the film that it won't matter.

It was decent. The action sequences were definitely a bit choppy, especially the first one. Also, there were a few times when I had to go "Is that even physically possible?" and the ending left a few loose ends still left, so I was sort of disappointed with that.

If you don't pay attention, you will hate this movie. It moves fairly quickly, so once you miss something, it's gone and you will be lost. So pay attention. The story is actually pretty good and actually feels down to earth, which is more than I can say about quite a few sci-fi movies.

For the record, I went into this movie not expecting much more than average, and I was slightly surprised. If you go in expecting the next academy award winner, you will completely despise it. It is no Dark Knight, so don't expect it to be. There's not much there artistically, so, if you don't like a movie simply trying to be entertaining for the sake of being entertaining, then you won't like this one. All in all, it was a good watch, not entirely worth the price for a new movie, so I suggest waiting until it comes to the cheaper theaters (if you have one near by).

As another note (and I'll probably get some heat for this) I actually enjoy Vin Diesel as an actor. This is not his best performance, but it's certainly not his worst (even though I still moderately enjoyed Chronicles of Riddick, I admit it was pretty bad and to this day I still don't know why I like it.) I think Diesel is good at what he does, although he really hasn't been in anything that really blows me away, even my favorite Diesel film (Pitch Black) wasn't completely stunning, but it was really good. With that in mind, this is a Vin Diesel movie, so, if you're not like me and you don't like Diesel, you will not like this movie and should just steer clear of it.

Wow, i don't even know where to start. I'd first like to say that,im usually generous and optimistic when i see movies, and usually films my friends say suck, i say they are okay, or when my friends say they are okay, i say it was great...This one failed in 2 very important aspects of storytelling. One, they were confused as to what the climax really was and two, there's no resolution or their pathetic excuse for one was terrible. I don't know whether they are setting up for a sequel or what but the ending was laughable(literally people laughed at the ending). Its all disappointing because the movie looked liked it had potential. the acting was average, but i didn't expect much from vin diesel and Michelle Yeoh did a decent job, other then that wait to this hits USA or TBS, don't even rent it from blockbuster, its not worth it.

Wtf.

Do you like headaches? Do you wake up everyday saying "Today sure is a great day to see a movie that could have been great, but I'd rather be confused!" Well then go see this movie! I don't really know what else to say, you can't really rate a movie as good, or bad, unless there is a movie to rate. It was so jumbled around with drastic scene changes, a plot that you don't even understand at the end of the movie, and uhhh, be prepared to be in an altered state of mind when you go to see it, maybe then you'll think you get it. Otherwise you're gonna hate this movie.

I fortunately watched Babylon A.D. first from the net and it seems it was (unfortunately) the wiser thing to do because it was the longer cut! Babylon A.D. is not a bad movie even with the 90 minute version but it lacks heavily what the longer cut offers.

I was mostly disappointed (therefore rating 6 which would've been 8++ something otherwise) about the ending of the shorter version which really sucks if you have seen the other one (i did think that here in Europe they would automatically release the 160 min version but no..). Money wasted on that 'cos I was not expecting this kind of cut.

Nevertheless I still enjoyed the plot, the visuals and the very stylized world what this movie brought to the table. The action scenes were also enjoyable. Hopefully Hopefully the better version will be released on DVD! Shame on you studios for not giving this movie the respect it deserves!