Amazon.co.uk Review
While not the career shot-in-the-arm that Vin Diesel was probably looking for and certainly needs,
Babylon AD does have its merits, and they make it just the kind of fodder waiting to greet a DVD audience.
The plot of Babylon AD sees Diesel heading from Europe to New York, transporting a package that turns out to be more than it first seems. Set in a post-apocalyptic world, Diesel’s mercenary character inevitably comes up against the dangers and problems of a world in chaos and disarray. This is a cue for plenty of action, and some solid effects, all of which are easy on the eye and the brain.
The problem with Babylon AD, though, is that the plot doesn’t make a great deal of sense, and the film displays all the hallmarks of one that’s been hacked too far in the editing room. This doesn’t fatally hurt it, but it certainly inflicts a good deal of damage.
As it stands, Babylon AD is a decent, and comparably brisk futuristic thriller, that had the potential to be a lot more than it is. But at worst, it’s still enjoyable enough, and a decent way to spend an easy night in front of the telly. --Jon Foster
Synopsis
In sci-fi thriller BABYLON A.D., Vin Diesel's Toorop is an antihero who quotes the best of cinema's bad boys from films such as THE GODFATHER and SCARFACE. But all the tattooed muscleman really wants to do is leave poverty- and violence-ridden Russia and return to his family's home in upstate New York. However, he has been banned from his native America, so when a Russian mobster (a prosthetic-enhanced Gérard Depardieu) offers him a job and a forged passport that will take him back home, he agrees, even though the mission seems close to suicide. He takes a strangely gifted orphan named Aurora (Melanie Thierry) from a Mongolian convent to Harlem, his only help being a nun--though it is a nun played by action star Michelle Yeoh. Thugs attack them on every leg of their journey, following them as they take car, train, sub, and snowmobile to ensure Aurora's safety.
BABYLON A.D works best when it's revealing facets of its futuristic world, from the refugee-camp look of Russia to the high-tech gloss of a 22-million-people-strong New York City. Production designers Sonja Klaus and Paul Cross, as well as director Mathieu Kassovitz (GOTHIKA), deserve praise for creating settings that evoke memories of dystopian films from BLADE RUNNER to CHILDREN OF MEN. Kassovitz, who is most familiar to audiences as the object of affection in AMELIE, also adapted the script from the Maurice G. Dantec novel BABYLON BABIES with Eric Besnard. In small roles, Depardieu and French favourite Charlotte Rampling (who plays a mysterious religious leader) provide substance and gravitas.
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