Ya can't say the producers of this movie don't have confidence in their creation when their title's acronym is BAD!

Review to follow...

Let's play a little game called "Guess The Pun"...



Bad news haters...

{Note: Here's where ya guess the pun...}



I honestly kept waiting for the story to disappoint me. I waited and waited. But all the freakin' way to livin' end, it kept it's promise to me - - it never betrayed me, it made me pray for the sequel, it is an honest to goodness masterpiece of the TEOTWAWKI genre - - it's even better than the extraordinary RE3 - - it's fan-tas-tic. (Ya know who's gonna appreciate this movie? bABA. That's who!!!)

Vin Diesel was great as Toorop, as was Mélanie Thierry as Aurora - - but the real core of the performances that sold this story to me was the incomparable Michelle Yeoh... she is way, way, way under-rated as an actress in American film. Her role as ass-kickin' nun, Sister Rebeka is, simply put - - a revelation. Also, very good is the seemingly indestructible Charlotte Rampling as the evil villainess, High Priestess.

But the real hero here is the story based on a novel by writer Maurice G. Dantec - - well that and the stark, cool direction by French actor/director Mathieu Kassovitz - - he starts out dark and goes to total blackness. Between the two of them, they have crafted a perfect film. I don't know if you exactly understood what I just wrote, so I'll repeat it:

Babylon A.D. is a perfect film.

...and this leads me to the big news...

This is a first and a last.

This is the first film upon which I have bestowed a perfect rating...

100 out of 5.

















...Oh, and that "last" thing I was talking about - - this is going to be my last post till November. See ya in the future...

wut?

No, sorry. This film is the definition of "epic fail."

To each his own I guess.

Nah this falls somewhere between Bradley's mental breakdown errrr glowing review and epic fail.
First half was decent bordering on being good but really fell apart in the third act. The whole tone and tempo of the movie came to an abrupt halt with the uttering of a single line of dialoge Overall the film was better than it should've been with Michelle Yeoh being the real stand out. Vin was vin and the new girl Mélanie Thierry was well the new girl learning to act on the job. Good first half, ok middle and bad ending.

Grade C+

Till November!!!!!

Why?

So we can all forget how much he liked this movie.

a small chase scene and bam the movie ends.

C+

Average movie until the end.

WORST..ENDING...EVER...

D-

Where do I begin? Director Mathieu Kassovitz has absolutely no clue what he's doing. The film is boring, the action sequences are mediocre, the film's plot is weak. This is like The fucked up version of The Chronicles Of Riddick. There's a lifeless relationship that grows between Toorop [ Vin Diesel ] and Aurora [ Melanie Thierry ] that in the end I could care less about. Toorop, Aurora, and Sister Rebeka [ Michelle Yeoh ] travel 6,000 miles during this film, but in the entire hour and a half I watched, the movie itself went no where.

The incredibly unelaborate plot is about Toorop taking Aurora to New York City. And how... wait, oh, yeah, that's it, the entire plot of the movie. And by the way, Aurora for some reason hardly explained has superpowers. Then towards to end they randomly fall in love and we get a weird relationship that was a horrible idea and shouldn't have even happend. The ending, like the movie, is a big "Wow, that's it?"

To sum this up in a nutshell: Boring, lifeless, miserably directed, average acting, stupid screenplay, Thierry Arbogast apparently doesn't know what he's doing with a camera, the cinematography down right sucked. Don't even think about seeing this in theaters, don't even wait for the DVD. Methieu Kassovitz ows an apology to everyone who saw his film, and to everyone who acted in it for embarrasing them.


D+

Not nearly as bad as the critics would lead you to believe; though it suffers heavily from studio tampering, and the complex plot is whittled down until it's barely understandable, there's a lot to like in what remains. It's basically a poor-man's Children of Men - in look as well as tone - with a few more blazing action scenes and a NYC tribute to Blade Runner. Its vision of the future is nothing new for sci-fi nuts, but it admirably follows CoM's lead and doesn't spend too much time on future history or worldwide backstories. Only in the third act, when the grand scheme is unveiled, does it stray from its intimate storyline and become unintelligible. Mostly it's the fault of removed scenes and crappy editing, but there's also a sense that film tried to capture too much in its narrow storyline. In a way, it's too ambitious.

I'd love to see the director's cut. It has the potential to be something truly great. As it is, though, it's a deeply flawed film that needs a lot of work.

You don't know the entire story. Kassovitz had supposedly made a solid film, but Fox tampered with it and eliminated over an hour of running time (yes, you read that right) in order to dumb it down for the masses, destroying the movie in the process.

I'd definetly agree with this.

Its a film with alot of interesting ideas that get completely cut off before they have a chance to form, if ever there was a film with hackjob editing it was this one. Scenes like the dialogue about the clone tigers and the refugee submarine hint at a film that was going for deeper meat to go with the explosions and fight scenes that remain, but thats all we get really alot of hints.

I really hope they release a directors cut.

If an hour was cut I'll buy the DVD.
It was a solid movie until the end where nothing was explained and the movie was pointless.
It wasn't cheesy so the director's cut may have a chance.
But as the theatrical version is laid before me I'd give it probably a C+.
I think D is too harsh a grade. At worst it's a C- movie.

Before that last 5 minutes (B/B+)
after (C-) (i'd watch it again, but skip the end)

really atrocious ending

It's hard to review a film that was critically panned by its own director. "Pure violence and stupidity," said Mathieu Kassovitz. "Like a bad episode of 24." Whoever smelt it, dealt it, Kassovitz!! You can flap your hands and wince as much as you like, but we all know who cut the cheese.

I found it hard to enjoy this odd reboot of The Pacifier franchise. Presumably, our self-hating director was thinking of that strange episode of 24 that was set in a bleak near future when many things that we take for granted - like a liberal society, cause and effect, plot, and logic - have gone the same way as the ozone layer.

Some films are described as the auteur's love letter to this or that genre. E.g., "Jackie Brown is Quentin Tarantino's love letter to pulpy B Movies"--"Kill Bill is Quentin Tarantino's love letter to pulpy B Movies"--"Deathproof is Quentin Tarantino's love letter to pulp B Movies." Babylon AD is Kassovitz's poison pen hate mail to humanity. Only a rare cameo appearance by Gerard Depardieu as himself redeems it.

Releasing this film in a world where Children of Men already exists is a bit like giving someone Michelin starred food for the main and then serving Lucky Charms in a plastic beaker for dessert. Poor form.

B-


I have only seen the Unrated version which, I assume, is the longer Director's Cut that Mathieu Kassovitz has been talking about. I know that there have been initial reports about an hour being cut from this film, but later on the director himself said that it was about 14 minutes only. That fits with the Unrated version. I don't know how much it improves on the domestic theatrical cut, but what I saw was a real mess with a lot of potential, some wonderful visuals and an absolutely misguided ending.

Kassovitz has a great eye for style and he's a skilled director. He has first shown that with La Haine and later went on to prove it with The Crimson Rivers which is one of the best Se7en knock-offs out there (IO know it is based on a book). Even his Gothika has some very well-done creepy moments. Like that film, Babylon A.D. has some really strong parts, most of them in the first half of the movie. Vin Diesel is a perfect fit for the anti-hero role, mostly resembling his best character to date - Riddick. Not as badass, but close enough. Michelle Yeoh is as good as usual, especially considering how little she was given to do. Admittedly, Mélanie Thierry isn't really good, but I didn't expect that to be otherwise. Casting Gérard Depradieu as a Russian mob boss was certainly an odd choice too.

Is it a poor man's Children of Men? I suppose so, but then again, Children of Men also wasn't the first film to invent the whole somewhat-post-apocalyptic future world consisting of run-down cities, shady government dealings and such. So, basically, Babylon A.D. just uses the essentials of the genre and that pretty well. The few action scenes that are in the movie (like the chase scene) are rather well done.

But then comes the big resolution and the ending...Aurora basically as a new Virgin Mary? Vin Diesel's character killed and resurrected? Yeah, there's really a good film in there somewhere, but the ending doesn't really inspire the viewer to look for it.

Really?

Babylon A.D.

Man, Vin Diesel makes some rubbish movies. Babylon A.D. is trying so hard to be epic like The Matrix, but it fails miserably and resembles more of a Southland Tales. Back to its star, though, he seems like such an egotistical asshole that he always has to be the leading, sole protagonist in any movie that he's in, which is why he's relegated to starring in shit like this. If he'd actually accept a supporting role his career might actually go somewhere. He can't act for shit, and one scene in this is particularly amusing; near the end when the girl lets a tear drop down her cheek, Diesel starts grimacing but he can't produce tears on cue, so he just looks stupid standing there as if he's just bitten into a lemon.

The film has an interesting supporting cast in Michelle Yeoh, Mark Strong, Gerard Depardieu and Charlotte Rampling, but none of them really offer anything appealing due to the nature of this movie, it's all about its "star". The production values must have been rather high for this, but I never saw a cinema release for it when I was back in the UK. It must have passed me by somehow. No big deal, and this is exactly the type of film that I'm happy to pass me by. The action is fast and messy, and the story is just uninteresting. The director said 'that 20th Century Fox interfered throughout production, and he never had a chance to shoot a scene the way it was scripted, or the way he wanted it to be', and it shows too.

D

Great review, especially the bolded part.

Mathieu Kassovitz's La haine is such an amazing film. The Crimson Rivers is very solid, too. His English-language follow-ups--Gothika and this one--are so inferior, though I do not hate Babylon A.D. I believe there is a decent film hiding in there.