Review: Babylon A.D.

Oh, Vin...Vin, Vin, Vin.

Vin first came to my attention as Riddick in Pitch Black. A really decent and thrilling scifi movie revolving around the super-tough Riddick who can see in the dark, which is helpful when you're stranded on a planet where it gets very, very dark at night. We all liked him because he was too cool no to be liked. And then they went and made The Riddick Chronicles. They butchered the whole concept of the though-as-nails-because-everything-is-so-simple-when-you-get-right-
down-to-it mutant-hero by turning sweet tomboy Jack into girly pseudo-sexy Kyra (oh how I hated that Davalos chick!) and bringing the whole thing down to the same girl-likes-boy-but-can-he-ever-like-her-? storyline. They threw in a few "scary" looking bad guys and something that should pass as a subplot and assumed that they had made a hit because, well, a) Vin Diesel is in it b) they played by the rules. I have therefore decided to ignore the so called "sequel". It was never mae in my world, because in my world, clowns are not only decidedly plotting to take over the world, but people also generally posses the decency not to ruin stories like that for us.
The point is, movies with Vin Diesel totally have the potential for coolness, but people sometimes make bad choices ("Pacifier"). I also think that it should be generally noted that I don't expect Oscar-worthy performances or anything. The guy's a typecast, which I'm guessing he must be happy with, so all I need him to be is a hypercool action hero.

So what about Babylon A.D.? First: the basic storyline. Some time in the near future. Toorop (Vin) is liked by his neighbours, says grace before eating and knows how to cook. He is also a mercenary who is rather violently asked to smuggle a girl over the borders of America by his ex-employer Gorsky (Depardieu). He complies and soon finds himself in the company of a mysterious young Aurora (Mélanie Thierry, very pretty, also starring in HB II) and her guardian, the Noeline Sister Rebecca (Yeoh). As they make their way across Russia to get to the New World, Toorop learns that something strange is happening to Aurora - she has an uncanny ability that makes her invaluable to certain people, a suspicion confirmed by the fact that they are being hunted. Of course they make it to America, where we are introduced to the fact that the Noelites seem to be a rather important religious group who are waiting for some miracle that will, as they say "change the world tomorrow". The plot thickens as the party arrives in New York and Toorop reveals that he always thought this was probably a suicide mission, especially when gunmen and other sleezy types on bikes arrive to make sure the girl is delivered. Now why anyone want to kill Aurora? Suddenly she reveals what makes her so special, which takes everyone totally off-guard. Then there's some fighting, some dying and more fighting. The Deus Ex Machina arrives of course and after some crass secrets surrounding Aurora are revealed, there must of course be more fighting. And suddenly, the movie's finished.

When the credits appeared on the screen, I could feel how everyone in the room frowned simultaneously. We were all like "What? Where...but...I don't...huh?", then the lights went on and that was that.
I have very mixed feelings about the whole thing. On one hand, the characters have enough depth for me to have believed that they were people; more than half an hour passed before the first action scene; the scenery was interesting and had enough realness to it for me to buy the whole the-future-sucks vibe and showed a vision of a cruel world that is very possible. On the other hand, there's the sudden ending that was way to brutal and just didn't give anybody time to digest the change that came upon the protagonists in the end and there's some truly horrible dialogue.
And then there's the plot. The thing is, that very little was explained in the course of the movie. The basic plot-twists were more or less clear, but the viewer learns neither the true motives nor what the connection between the different antagonists really is. In general, nothing is really explained; there's no narrator that tells us why the world is how it is or what the rules are. The big scheme of things is never revealed, nor are the little things like. Why is that freaky priestess woman's faced being lifted?
The fact that nothing is ever explicitly said works for the movie - up to a certain point. By leaving us in the dark, we just have to figure stuff out by ourselves. We are just shown a movie about people, what goes on beyond that isn't really pivotal.
But the lack of information entails a lack of atmosphere. So much is left unsaid at the cost of credibility. I want the movie to show what the problem is exactly, not to leave me confused and on my own.

All in all, I enjoyed the movie. The action scene were not the central part of the movie and the characters develop enough for me to have been interested and entertained for one and a half hour. Apparently, the French version is ten minutes longer. I wonder a) which version I saw b) if I saw the shorter one, if the longer one might have been better.

Mathieu Kassovitz (who also directed the movie) based is screenplay on novel by French writer Maurice G. Dantec.

Starring Vin Diesel, Michelle Yeoh, Mélanie Thierry, Mark Strong, Charlotte Rampling, Gérard Depardieu...
Also see http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0364970/