Movie Trick

A mercenary charged with delivering a young woman from Russia to Canada learns that she has been manipulated by a synthetic virus and what lies inside her could doom the human race.

Babylon A.D

Directed by : Mathieu Kassovitz
Produced by : Alain Goldman, Mathieu Kassovitz
Written by : Éric Besnard
Starring : Vin Diesel, Michelle Yeoh, Mélanie Thierry
Music by : Hans Zimmer, Atli Orvarsson
Cinematography : Thierry Arbogast
Editing by : Benjamin Weill
Distributed by : 20th Century Fox
Release date : August 29, 2008
Running time : 90 min.
Country : France, United States
Language : English
Budget : $60 million
Official Site : www.babylonadmovie.com
poster source: vindieselgallery

Also Known As: Babylon Babies
Production Status: In Production/Awaiting Release
Genres: Drama, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Thriller and Adaptation
Release Date: August 29th, 2008 (wide)
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, language and some sexuality.
Production Co. : Legende, MNP Enterprises, Nord Ouest Productions
Studios: 20th Century Fox
Financiers : Co-Financier: Canal Plus, 20th Century Fox
Filming Locations: Canada, Prague
Produced in: France

Set in a post-apocalyptic future, a mercenary (Vin Diesel) takes on job of transporting human. Babylon A.D. Background based on French novelist Maurice G. Dantec’s Babylon Babies - which had lot to do with the political implications of biotechnology, along with the disintegration of USSR superpower into futuristic anarchy.

The Judgment of This action - futuristic adventure epic is to become terrific set piece sequences, but never quite manages to sustain the drama as it gets lost in its meandering quasi religious plotline.

The special effects are still pretty impressive, but then for some reason the film limps into a dull by-the-numbers car chase that does nothing to add to the futuristic mayhem.

That isn’t to say that there isn’t a good deal of sci-fi mayhem and fun to be had along the way - purely which the elements never really all gel together effectively. Based on the 1999 French sci-fi novel Babylon Babies, the film’s directed with real pace and style by French filmmaker Mathieu Kassovitz (he made the Halle Berry chiller Gothika), and features a suitably muscular return to form for a nicely steely Vin Diesel, who has just the right amount of monosyllabic machismo for the oddly-named mercenary Thoorop.

The early section is especially impressive as Thoorop and his sultry cargo of enigmatic beauty Aurora and Rebecca (Michelle Yeoh ) battle their way through a war-torn and impoverished Eastern Europe before finally taking a submarine to Alaska.

The pace drops off once they hit the West and a clumsily-handled semi-romance between Thoorop and Aurora raises its ugly head. Throw into the mix cloning, genetics, gun battles and religious cults and the film spirals into a bit of chaos as they hit a Blade Runner-style New York.

Here’s Short Story Line:

Vin Diesel as multinational mercenary Toorop, arrives on the New Serbia scene with bad attitude, as if he’d just finished hanging out on a Brooklyn street corner. Toorop mastermind entrusted to Gorsky (Gerard Depardieu), with a mysterious mission to deliver convent Aurora (Melanie Thierry), along with her Sister Rebeka (Michelle Yeoh), to the Big Apple by way of some cross-continental tundra’s.

More travelogue and hi-tech tall tale than terror ride, Babylon A.D. does dazzle on occasion with its apocalyptically minded explosive action sequences. But they seem at times to be out of synch, as if assembled by a dyslexic editing crew.Then there’s the matter of the enigmatic Aurora with all sorts of suspicious superpowers, including those associated with virginal fertility, whom a devious high priestess religious not played by Charlotte Rampling schemes to snatch. Though Toorop’s highly efficient but basically could care fewer outlooks on life is pretty contagious, and makes it all hardly seem to matter. So when Diesel lets on that he doesn’t like to get involved, you can’t be sure if he’s talking about his on screen clientele, or this movie.

Trailer :