Babylon A.D.
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Movie Reviews of Babylon A.D.
Movie Review: A MUST for Vin Diesel fans
Summary: 4 Stars
Very cool, with all the typical action sequences of impossible near misses and inhuman agility and ... oh, heck. If you've seen XXX or Pitch Black, you know what to expect, and this movie delivers.Movie Review: Babylon A.D.
Summary: 4 Stars
My son wanted the movie for Xmas. We watched it and it was very good in my opinion.Movie Review: Doesn't deserve the hatred -- and probably no more than a rental.
Summary: 3 Stars
Much like The Spirit, a poorly-written, all-over-the-map misinterpretation of Will Eisner's character, complete with entertaining performances and stunning visuals, Babylon A.D. is a confusing, occasionally dry, very familiar mess with some strong performances and stunning visuals in service of a fairly engaging story. It is not, by any means, a great film. It is also not, by any means, a disaster. I noted that Babylon A.D. has one one-star rating on here, and I think the movie deserves better. I saw the film in theaters, and I was reasonably entertained up until the last five minutes. Not even The Spirit completely lived up to that standard.
When films like this come along, I wonder how many people tune out once they've seen a few things they don't like. I am a glass-half-full person. Hundreds of films come out every year, and 90% of them probably have merits that people simply ignore because it's easier to attack the things about them that aren't as sharp. Sure, it borrows from Blade Runner. Movies borrow from other movies. If this was automatically a strike against a film, Quentin Tarantino would have no fans. I personally think Vin Diesel is a fairly charismatic actor (see his recent effort Find Me Guilty for evidence of this), and yet it's like he's got a target on his head. I'm sure some people decided they didn't like this movie just on the basis that he's in it.
The "Unrated and Raw" presentation on DVD does not work miracles on the film. Numerous internet sources claim varying degrees of footage was altered or chopped out of the film, ranging from 15 minutes (since the theatrical cut ran 90m and this runs 103, that's about 15) all the way up to a towering 70m. Admittedly, this ending makes a LOT more sense (which is to say, any sense) than the theatrical ending, although, with apologies to director Mathieu Kassovitz, I liked the hummer chase, presented as a deleted scene on the 2-disc DVD (not to mention in the version without the chase, one set of antagonists just gives up, apparently).
For some reason, it's apparently easy to forget that the scale goes from one to five, and the three stars in the middle are more than padding for the first and last ones. I've seen movies that aren't even always in focus. Certainly a movie can become terrible long before it starts to fail on a technical level, but Babylon A.D. is not one of those movies. It's perfectly OKAY, and that's something that deserves some more credit.
Movie Review: A Good Yarn Spoiled by Bad Ending & Worse Geography.
Summary: 3 Stars
I have a World map on my wall above my computer & it definitely shows Kazakhstan being WEST of Mongolia & not East. Such is the lazy plotting with this film that, between Mongolia & Vladivostok (near Korea), our hero manages to include Kazakhstan en-route in a pretty meaningless diversion.
Normally I wouldn't bother with this sort of nitpicking but such basic errors pop up again and again in this film betraying a script that is well written but about as well researched as the The Da Vinci Code!
There is also more, such as Vin Diesel being forced to hike across Ice to take a submarine from Vladivostock (a bustling *Warm Water* Russian port), with further Icy adventures 'crossing the border' into the United States (What border?)
These quibbles are all forgivable in a B-movie (which I assume this has to be) and up till the last 10-15 minutes the rest of the movie was comparable to The Fifth Element (in being futuristic, having good action sequences & not too cerebral.)
However, as other reviewers have said, these last few minutes really do let down the film.
Badly.
I'd read the reviews before & thought I could work out what happened, but it defied me. Who on Earth is chasing him & to what end? Why does the plot end with him starting a family & not resolving the compelling mysteries of the film?
The meaning of the ending eluded me & instead came over as one of those pretentious endings where the director tries to break with cliche & instead falls in the sea of hideous bad-creative mud that surrounds every small island of the good stuff.
So, if you want to see a good action film then this will pass the time, is only 90 minutes & is a lot better than the appalling xXx.
If, on the other hand, you don't like B-movies, then give this a miss & try a decent action flick instead...
Movie Review: Cross-country body count flick
Summary: 3 Stars
Simple premise: drop Vin Diesel into some collapsing world of the future, give him A Quest with A Fair Maiden, arrange for plenty of guns, and stand back. Having Charlotte Rampling there for some sneering just makes it better.
The tech-grunge look of that imagined world comes across very effectively. One fight scene in a dogtown warren full of scaffolding is among the best-choreographed I've seen. The Fair Maiden is cute, but this is a guns'n'chases flick, so chastity rules. And the ending simply defies all logic. It's touching, but don't - just don't try to figure out why that payload incurs the price it does. That part just doesn't make any sense.
But, if anyone wanted a movie that made sense, they wouldn't have given Diesel a gun. Cool shoot-em-up action prevails, and that's all this movie was really about. Oh, and Michelle Yeoh showing some cool moves.
-- wiredweird