Even if it never finds an
audience outside L.A., someone ought to write a book called When Dull Films
Happen To Clever Production Designers. It would probably help console Babylon A.D. designers Paul Cross and
Sonja Klaus. Their work helps the film realize a near-future living in the wake
of a profound ecological and/or economic collapse. (What's happened is never
made clear, but it was obviously unpleasant.) Most of the world lives in a
sprawling, Third World black market where a rabbit trapped in a city park
qualifies as a feast. The privileged few inhabit desolate urban palaces where
any piece of glass can, and usually does, serve as a television screen. Blade
Runner
and Children Of Men did it before and better, but this world is made to look both
lived-in and ickily plausible.
In fact, maybe Cross and
Klaus should write that book. They wouldn't be the first involved in the film
to badmouth it. French director Mathieu Kassovitz publicly disowned it before
its release. (Perhaps he was hoping to engineer a retreat back to the
small-scale world that allowed him to make the acclaimed La Haine, and move away from a
Hollywood stint that's seen Gothika and this film.) Kassovtiz certainly won't be the
last to say unkind things about it.
Babylon A.D. opens in a Russian
wasteland that's home to Vin Diesel, a soldier of fortune condemned as a
terrorist and unable to return to his U.S. homeland. (For the benefit of our
younger readers: Diesel was a minor movie star in the early '00s.) When a
Russian fat man (Gérard Depardieu) presses him into service, Diesel is charged
with transporting kung-fu action nun Michelle Yeoh and her mysterious young
companion (the Mischa Barton-esque Mélanie Thierry) to modern New York. That
would count as a difficult task in the sucky middle of the 21st century, even
if the trio weren't being pursued by gunmen.
As long it sticks to that
chase, Babylon A.D. remains a sub-passable lead-footed action film with neat
scenery. When it tries to explain why everyone wants Thierry, in a badly
patched together final act—something about artificial intelligence and a virgin birth—it
gets into real trouble. Diesel, for one, doesn't do anything to rescue the
film, delivering some of the least-inspired line readings this side of an
industrial film. Dialogue like "This isn't a game!" doesn't help. And, true, it
isn't a game. In games, at least somebody wins.