Babylon A.D.
Two-Disc Special Edition
Directed by Mathieu Kassovitz
Starring Vin Diesel, Michelle Yeoh, Mélanie Thierry, Gérard Depardieu, Charlotte Rampling
Fox Home Entertainment
Released Date: January 6, 2009

Sometimes you see a movie and you’re just not sure what to say about it. You’ve got one thousand and one very solid thoughts about it, but you’re not sure how to put them. Sometimes this is a good thing and sometimes it’s bad. None the less, this is what has happened to me for Babylon A.D., so bear with me as best you can.

Babylon A.D. follows Toorop (Vin Diesel), a mercenary who’s living in an anarchy-ridden Russia after being banished from the U.S. for terrorism. While scraping to get by, Toorop is offered a job from an evil mob boss-type named Gorsky (Gérard Depardieu), who offers him the chance to get a fresh, clean slate back in America and a $500,000 payday. The job: deliver a young girl (Mélanie Thierry) along with her mother-figure (Michelle Yeoh) who’s never seen the outside world from a convent full of those who are called Noelites to New York City.

By Graceland Geek

Babylon A.D.
Directed by Mathieu Kassovitz
Starring Vin Diesel, Michelle Yeoh, Melanie Thierry, Lambert Wilson, Gerard Depardieu
Rated PG-13
Release date: August 29, 2008

Earlier this week director Mathieu Kassovitz told AMC that he was very unhappy with Babylon A.D.. “It’s pure violence and stupidity,” he admits. “The movie is supposed to teach us that the education of our children will mean the future of our planet. All the action scenes had a goal: They were supposed to be driven by either a metaphysical point of view or experience for the characters”¦ instead parts of the movie are like a bad episode of 24.”

Ultimately, Kassovitz is correct in everything he said but that didn’t make me hate the film, but nothing was enough for me to like it either. To me, the film seemed like someone tried to take Children of Men, Blade Runner, Minority Report, The Fifth Element , and Serenity and attempted to incorporate all the best elements into this post-apocalyptic tale, which ended up instead being nothing short of The Bodyguard or Waterworld, where you have a stoic male character protecting a younger female character. As the director himself put it, this film was simply a bunch of cut action scenes that blend together into a story that had absolutely no character development or story all.

With the end of Summer upon us (or for me, Winter, but whatever), cinemas are seeing less and less profits from their showings. And though Tropic Thunder has once again managed to grab the top spot at the box office, it managed to do so with a measly $11.5 million. The blockbuster summer is definitely over, and who knows how long until we get one like it again.

The highest placed newcomer to this weekend’s box office (I feel like I’m commentating at the Olympics) was Babylon A.D., which itself has been in the news lately due to its directors hatred of the movie. The movie’s director, Mathieu Kassovitz, came out earlier in the week blaming the likely poor performance on Fox, who he blamed for interfering in the process. Nevertheless, it did come in number two, with $9.7 million in takings.