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Babylon A.D. (2-Disc Edition with Bonus Digital Copy) [DVD] [2008]
 
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Babylon A.D. (2-Disc Edition with Bonus Digital Copy) [DVD] [2008]

DVD ~ Vin Diesel
2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
RRP: £24.99
Price: £14.87 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
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  • This item: Babylon A.D. (2-Disc Edition with Bonus Digital Copy) [DVD] [2008] DVD ~ Vin Diesel

    In stock.
    Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk.
    This item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions

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What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

Babylon A.D. (2-Disc Edition with Bonus Digital Copy) [DVD] [2008]
58% buy the item featured on this page:
Babylon A.D. (2-Disc Edition with Bonus Digital Copy) [DVD] [2008] 2.0 out of 5 stars (8)
£14.87
Babylon A.D. (1-Disc Edition) [DVD] [2008]
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Babylon A.D. (1-Disc Edition) [DVD] [2008] 2.5 out of 5 stars (13)
£4.98
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Product details

  • Actors: Vin Diesel, Charlotte Rampling, Mark Strong, Michelle Khan, Gerard Depardieu
  • Directors: Mathieu Kassovitz
  • Format: PAL
  • Region: Region 2 (This DVD may not be viewable outside Europe. Read more about DVD formats.)
  • Number of discs: 2
  • Classification: 15
  • Studio: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
  • DVD Release Date: 29 Dec 2008
  • Run Time: 87 minutes
  • Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
  • ASIN: B001HY4TGY
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 13,724 in DVD (See Bestsellers in DVD)

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Reviews

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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8 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
2.0 out of 5 stars (8 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars A DVD release that rescues a shambolic theatrical presentation, 7 Nov 2008


This movie was released at the box office during late August and early September, a time of the calendar year when studios release movies which they feel would likely under-perform at the box office at any other time. These films are often judged not to be of sufficient quality to compete with the summer blockbusters, and are therefore shunted to this release window between the post-summer period and September/October. The movies are often considered to be a dead-loss for the studio. They have often gone over budget to the point where the studios are so desperate to make as much money back as possible quickly, they cut the picture down to a running time of 80 minutes so they can screen the picture ten times a day in an attempt to recover some of their investment. One such movie to have suffered this fate at the box office was Babylon AD. Director Kassovitz and star Vin Diesel have very publicly fallen out over the project, with Kassovitz refusing to ever work with Vin Diesel again. The production was also beset with lengthy delays, and rumours that Vin Diesel behaved badly on set.

Director Matthieu Kassovitz has gone public with much vocal disapproval of Fox Pictures' treatment of his movie, angry at the studio for forcing him to chop 20 minutes off the running time. One can sympathise. Though the picture was sometimes engaging, the cuts which were made to the theatrical cut lead to the plot only being revealed at the very end of the picture, leading to the movie making little or no sense. When the movie ended you were left with a baffling collection of unanswered questions. Fox pictures, possibly with the assistance of the director, have recut the movie with a few new scenes, added some extensions to some pre-existing scenes, altered Vin Diesel's gravely voiceover, and removed a pointless car chase from the finale to the picture that always seemed out of place.

The action starts off with world-weary mercenary Toorop (Vin Diesel) roaming the grimy rain-soaked streets of an Eastern European War Zone, before being snatched from his bombed-out apartment by gunmen and forced to attend a meeting with the local warlord (a noticeably over-dubbed Gerard Depardieu). Toorop is given the task of transporting a mysterious young woman named Aurora (Melanie Thierry) across this dystopian future to apparent safe sanctuary in New York City, USA. He is also saddled with the added burden of her bodyguard Sister Rebeka (an excellent Michelle Yeoh), a member of Aurora's guardian religious sect, who refuses to leave her side. Reluctantly Toorop proceeds to trudge relentlessly through the mud and muck of what appears to be the most unsightly series of depressing European war-torn cities ever depicted on screen - god knows where the film-makers chose as their locations. Every so often the trio are harassed, shot at and beaten-up by a series of unnamed bad-guys who seem determined to interfere with Toorop's mission and seize Aurora for themselves.

As the action shifts forward Toorop visits old haunts, meets up with former associates, hitches a ride in a renegade Russian submarine and even gets involved in a cage-fight as he struggles desperately to keep in control of his charge and deliver her to safety. He also engages in a spot of snowmobile acrobatics as he disarms a squadron of deadly automated fighter drones patrolling a desolate part of a blizzard-strewn mountain range. The action is of course a guilty pleasure, and Vin approaches it all with his usual muscle-bound gait and gravel-voiced charisma. But there are problems: the identity and motivation of the aforementioned nameless villains, as well as a group of mysterious saviours that keep on appearing are never fully explained - nor is the secret that Aurora is carrying. The only clue as to what the hell is going on is provided (as mentioned earlier), at the very end of the movie, by a bizarrely dressed Lambert Wilson as Aurora's father, who delivers what is supposed to be the film's moment of revelation, but only succeeds in confusing the audience even further as he mumbles something about embryo experimentation and genetic manipulation: the suggestion being that the virginal Aurora is carrying two messianic twins, destined to be the lynch-pin of the nefarious plans of the religious sect referred to earlier. Charlotte Rampling also appears as Lambert Wilson's evil ex-wife, and leader of this sect, but gets lost in the edit and is never seen again. The finale; an admittedly brilliantly staged fire-fight in the centre of what is supposed to be Times Square, is very exciting - featuring the movie's money shot; a swirling Matrix-style effect of a missile detonation being deflected by the burgeoning almost supernatural powers of Aurora and her unborn infants.

The single edition DVD is vanilla, with no extras and is presumably aimed at those buyers who don't give a damn about coherency. The 2 Disc DVD is marketed as a `Harder Cut', with some of the previous action augmented by lengthier shots of fighting and violence. The final car chase scene has thankfully been excised. No more do we have to watch a bored looking Vin Diesel waving an automatic rifle around before vapourising all the pursuing vehicles with a naff-looking explosive. The DVD presentation is much more polished, the extended scenes helping to make the movie more understandable. There are some featurettes which focus on the author of the Babylon AD novel, behind the scenes material and the snow mobile stunts. All are welcome. There is also a Digital Copy of the film for you to download. The most interesting extra is a short 3 minute animated comic book prequel story, providing a bit of back-story to the main action. The inclusion of this feature the clearest evidence yet from Fox admitting that they made mistakes with the theatrical cut. The 2 Disc Edition is a good purchase for Science Fiction fans, and fans of Diesel himself. File this under `Cyber-Punk Oddity'.
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3 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars How Fox fox it wrong., 1 Nov 2008
By Ms. J. Edwards (Kettering Northants UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Characters (some of them) and the storyline we are led to believe were based on Maurice D Dantec's book Babylon Babies although hardly recognisable as such and so mutilated by Fox's cutting crew that we can only hope the director's cut will be released sometime in the near future. Full length and '18', would have stood a much better chance in the box office. Predicts a pretty grim future not dissimilar to Blade Runner.
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1 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely Dire......!!!!, 5 Jan 2009
I really cannot see the point in the director having made this utter pile of garbage - weak, lame script, boring and predictable "action" scenes, and terrible acting - it seems that there is supposed to be a story here but it does not come across in the film at all - I only watched it to the end to see if there was actually any sensible conclusion and there wasn't..

I really cant say anything more about this film apart from the fact that it is an hour or so of my life that I will never get back....

Possibly one of the worst films I have ever seen. Truly.

(PS It only gets a one star rating because I was unable to give it no stars.......!!)
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars Stick with Riddick
This film didn't do it for me - they story line was interesting - could have been more creative with it - but the film was a bit dry to watch - dissapointing.
Published 1 month ago by Bluewaves

2.0 out of 5 stars Babylon AD, the AD being Another Dissapointment...
Babylon AD isn't all bad and isn't as terrible as some of the review make out here. It seems like the theatrical version is a worse cut than this version (god help those cineman... Read more
Published 6 months ago by Dale M. Jackson

5.0 out of 5 stars The movie
c'mon, this is a great movie which is different from all other films. Has a good cinema like experience.
Published 8 months ago by Mrs. A. N. Jafferjee

1.0 out of 5 stars step forward the worst film of 2008!
Garbage! The film was beset with many, many problems right from the word go and does not do the director any justice what so ever. Read more
Published 10 months ago by godzilla78

1.0 out of 5 stars Babylon AD = Utter Tripe
Oh dear... what can I say, other than Babylon AD is a complete and utter pile of, a word has yet to be invented to describe what a complete an utter pile of whatever this is, but... Read more
Published 10 months ago by Daniel Maddock

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