Dorkgasm Gonzo Is God

Another Fine Mess
By
Michael C. Riedlinger
Editor-In-Chief

            Mathieu Kassovitz was rumored to be at war for several months. The word was that the star of his latest film, Vin Diesel, hated the movie they were working on and couldn’t help but throw in his two-cents at every turn. After seeing Babylon A.D., it is clear that Kassovitz should have listened.

            Based on the novel Babylon Babies by Maurice G. Dantec, this movie was supposed to be Kassovitz’s Fifth Element. Despite La Hain being one of my favorite French films, most Americans only know the director as the “Gimmee the cash!” guy from Luc Beson’s aforementioned space-opera. He’s just so funny pointing a gun at Bruce Willis and wearing a hat with a picture of a hallway on it! While Babylon A.D. certainly meets the challenge technologically, it just doesn’t have the panache of Fifth Element, and it is missing many qualities that would make it a distinctly French experience as well. It is so disjointed that I think I spent more time trying to figure out what the film was trying to be than actually enjoying it for the mindless romp it became.

            The story, or what is left of it in this form, follows Toorop (Vin Diesel) as he smuggles a young girl named Aurora (Melanie Thierry) and her chaperone (Michelle Yeoh) into a future dystopian America. On their journey, it becomes apparent that there is something special about Aurora and Toorop begins to see her as more than just another job. Nothing atypical about that, but there are tidbits that should have been better explored. The landscape is ripe with new religious and political groups, and the technology on display is rock-solid science fiction, but none of this is really discussed. Instead, Kassovitz presents us with a mess of mind and eye candy that teases us, but never quite gets us there.

Click image to visit the site

            Despite that, the director could have taken this film in the direction of French legends like Jean-Luc Godard, focusing on the relationships between these distant, lonely men and women. He very nearly does, more than once, but seems to decide against it. Aurora plainly has enough daddy issues to fill an After School Special marathon, but all we really end up with is that she is important to a religious sect looking to turn her into the modern Virgin Mary. In an age where cloning is old-hat, I’m still not sure why virgin birth is a selling point for anyone, but then who am I to question religious crackpottery?

            Crackpots are full of zany ideas, and in the end that is all this film is, a zany idea. The performances are solid enough, and the visuals are tantalizing, but there just isn’t enough substance to make this boat float. It could have been a great, mindless action flick. It could have been a superior emotional sojourn on par with 2001: A Space Odyssey or Children of Men. Babylon A.D. could have been a lot of things, but it wasn’t. I left the theater scratching my head, but I was not trying to figure out what happened, though I’m sure there are some who did, due to the abbreviated American edit we all sat through. No, I immediately wanted to know, and still do, what the hell Kassovitz was thinking. Maybe he was on drugs or distracted by relationship issues. Hell, I even heard one rumor on-line that the film was plagued by a love spat between Vin Diesel and the director. I suppose we could wait for the director’s cut dvd, but even then I doubt we’ll make much sense of this film because it’s more confused about what it is than a homosexual transgender high school kid who just found out s/he was cloned in a lab from the DNA of Jesus Christ.

Final Verdict (out of 5):