Babylon A.D.

Mercenary Toorop has been hired to smuggle a young woman into America but is he just delivering a girl or a weapon? Adapted from the book Babylon Babies by Maurice G. Dantec. Babylon A.D. stars Vin Diesel (Fast and the Furious), Michelle Yoeh (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon), and Melanie Thierry (The Legend of 1900).

The film begins with the usual macho man bravado that plagues any Vin Diesel starring film but what you get is really a concept film with a lot of very cool idea’s. Author Dantec describes himself a science fiction writer, which translates well to the big screen, but he also describes himself a metaphysical writer. The idea’s behind his work are imaginative and mostly pertaining to the evolution and de-evolution of humanity which is a focus point for most of the film. While yes there is a lot of mindless action and tough guy bravado the core message in the entire film remains; How does humanity react in times of great adversity? Director Mathieu Kassovitz
(Gothika) is able to manipulate his film to create a living example of this question in the form of even more questions that logically work themselves out. It will make sense when you watch but you have to dig deep into the complexity of the film which I promise is buried in there somewhere. While it was fascinating and some of the gadgets in the film were very cool the story was kind of confusing at the end which didn’t leave me with the satisfaction that I wanted. It will probably be a film you need to see more then once to get it all straightened out, not for the action, but for the meaning.

Bonus features are a plenty including everything from features on the stunt work in the film to shooting locations and deleted scenes and even a short animated prequel to the film. The list is long and I actually enjoyed the bonus features a lot, especially the futuristic commercials kind like how you would see on Sci-Fi channels Eureka promotions. Very cool and funny. All in all it wasn’t as terrible a film as many people have let on and I would suggest seeing it. Enjoy.