Starring: Vin Diesel, Michelle Yeoh, Mark Strong, Melanie Thierry, and Charlotte Rampling
Grade: C+
This was on track for a “B-” grade until the movie started to fall apart in the last half hour or so.
Summary
After an opening where we see Toorop (Diesel) about to get shot, accompanied with a bleak narration of the dystopian world around him, we jump to six days earlier when Toorop wakes up in bed with his pistol in hand.
He resides in war-torn New Serbia in Eastern Europe. He picks up a dead animal to cook up from the market and when he gets back to his apartment, another resident tells him someone was looking for him earlier. Undeterred, he cooks his food, as the television in the back talks about some explosion that killed a bunch of people in Kazakhstan.
Just as he gets comfortable, a fellow mercenary named Karl blows the door open with a bunch of other mercenaries and points a gun at him. Toorop quickly disarms Karl and points the gun at him, demanding to know who hired him. Karl admits it was Russian mobster Gorsky (Gérard Depardieu). Toorop kills Karl, but he leaves with the other mercenaries at gunpoint, without a fight. They put him in a tank and inside is Gorsky. He tells Toorop this needed to happen as it did because he wanted to know if Toorop was the same man that worked for him ten years ago. He wants him to be a smuggler, but Toorop insists he doesn’t do refugees anymore. Plus, Gorsky owns the borders anyway. He doesn’t need Toorop’s help. However, he tells Toorop he only owns the borders on this side. It’s also for a girl, and she needs to be in America in six days. Toorop reminds him he’s not allowed in the U.S. anymore and U.N. passports are impossible to fake, but Gorsky gives him a special type of syringe. He tells Toorop to inject it into his neck once he gets to the border, and it will free him to start his new life. No other direct information is given. The only catch is that he will have to “make a choice”. Toorop says he’ll do it for $500,000, and it’s agreed upon. He’ll start immediately and a car will pick him up at the rendezvous point. Before they depart, they both tell each other they will kill the other if they’re double crossed.
Later, we see Toorop alone. A spotlight is shined onto a car. He gets in and a helicopter attaches itself to the car and transports him to a Noelite Convent in Kyrgyzstan. Soon after, he’s greeted by Sister Rebeka (Yeoh) who institutes three rules before they leave on their journey.
- Wherever the girl goes, Sister Rebeka goes.
- The less contact the girl has with the outside world, the better. Toorop is here to protect her from outside influences. This includes “seeing, hearing, and feeling”.
- No foul language.
Toorop, who laughs at the audacious attitude of Rebeka, responds with his one rule: “Don’t fuck with me, or I’ll leave you standing in the middle of nowhere with nothing but your ass to sell to get back here”.
They agree to each other’s rules, and Rebeka brings over the innocent Aurora (Theirry). She gets off on the wrong foot with Toorop after asking if he’s a killer. He lets her know this is just a job for him and tells her they shouldn’t even talk. Next, they drive off to Troitsk, Kazakhstan. They walk through a market at a fast pace, and Toorop steals some clothes for Aurora to change into to disguise her. As this happens, an unknown faction locks their eyes on them from afar because they’re after Aurora. Aurora gets increasingly frightened about the public around her, stopping in her tracks to see two caged Siberian tigers in the midst of it all until she’s pulled away to get back on track. While in a crowd ready to cross through the border, Aurora gets freaked out and runs away. Toorop and Rebeka catch up to her, but she continuously tells them they can’t go that way because she has a bad feeling about it. As Toorop argues with the both of them, an explosion happens at the exact spot she was talking about. The three finally get to the train and as Toorop has trouble offering money to some Russians for their seats, Aurora speaks Russian and is able to pull it off. As things calm down, she notes to Toorop that Siberian tigers became extinct in 2017, so she wonders what were in those cages. Apparently, they were second generation clones and not real.
They then get on the topic of God and man-made things, but a not-in-the-mood Toorop changes the subject and asks about what happened in the market. Rebeka chimes in and blames Toorop for putting them in a scary situation.
After getting frisked at a refugee camp in Vladivostok, Russia, the three get to some nightclub where they hold cage fights, with Toorop looking for his friend and fellow smuggler Finn (Strong). Toorop separates from them to talk to him, telling Finn about his deal with Gorsky. He asks Finn for three passes for the boat and two snow bikes on the other side to transport Aurora to New York City. Finn reminds Toorop he’s listed as a terrorist in America, but he tells Finn he’s technically got a passport (the syringe), and he’s not coming back. He offers Finn $50,000 on the spot, and he accepts. Toorop collects the girls, but the unknown faction of people that have been watching them finally approach. They know Toorop by name, but he doesn’t know them. They offer him $1,000,000 in tax free cash to walk away from the girls without a fight. Seeing something is very weird about this offer, he knocks the money into the air and a chase ensues. Eventually, Aurora finds herself in one of the cages with a fighter, but he gently caresses her face. Toorop runs into the cage, and someone locks the door behind him, forcing Toorop to fight the guy. It gets messy in a hurry. When Toorop puts the guy in a chokehold, Aurora yells at him to stop because she felt the guy wanted to protect her. Rebeka gets into the cage to get Auora out, but two of the mercenaries tell her they’re there on behalf of her “father”. Intrigued, Auora goes with them because she “has to know”.
Toorop and Rebeka catch up to the group outside the club and Toorop shoots one of them, promising to kill another. The unknown leader tells Aurora it’s okay because they’re all willing to die for her, but she insists she doesn’t want anyone to do that. She then goes back to Toorop and Rebeka, and the group runs away. As Toorop and Aurora scream at each other over what just happened, Rebeka slaps and then hugs her. A calmed down Toorop reminds her the mission is to get her to New York, and he’s going to do it any cost. The problem is that as more and more gets revealed about Aurora, Toorop’s mission starts to change before his very eyes.
My Thoughts:
There is nothing Babylon A.D. does in the science fiction genre, or dystopian subgenre that you haven’t seen before. In that regard, I can understand why this wasn’t a critical darling. With that being said, I enjoyed the first half of this movie.
It hooked me from the start. Though it looked like Detroit in the early winter months, I liked the dreary landscape that represented the future. It’s cold, it’s gray, and really captures the kill-or-be-killed mindset all the citizens in this bleak futuristic world possess, especially with our protagonist Toorop. A big part of why the first part of the movie works is Vin Diesel’s portrayal of this hardened and ruthless antihero. First of all, I loved the look. He’s scarred both physically and mentally, his tattoos seem to tell a story, and his stubble and shadowing bald fade was a cool look to add to the character. Admittedly, Diesel didn’t look like a natural smoker, but the character definitely seemed like he would be.
Living in Eastern Europe, and especially Serbia, for as long as he has would definitely do that to someone.
His portrayal was cool though. He’s a bit of an asshole and will kill in a heartbeat if needed. It’s much different from the usual “I don’t got friends, I got family” cornball shtick he made famous in the Fast and Furious movies. This was more of a grounded and serious Diesel who looks like he’s seen some shit and has done worse to survive in a fast-paced world that waits for no man. Apparently, he’s even on a terrorist list in America. This is why he legally can’t go back.
They never tell us what he did though which is what I really wanted to know.
He works to get to the next day and will do whatever is needed to get paid and live just a little longer. He has no loyalty to anyone and no family of any kind. He’s by himself in this cutthroat world and to continue to live, he has to be more cutthroat than anyone. Right away, he makes this known with Sister Rebeka, and it’s a fun interaction because she tries to play tough with him, basically saying she won’t take any shit. He sees right through it and lets her know he’s all about business with his “don’t fuck with me” line. I loved it, and I enjoyed their uneasy relationship early on. It only made this trio even more likable when Toorop starts to loosen up around them once Aurora saves him from dying after the chase in the snowy mountains. I couldn’t help but smile seeing the three have a drink together. You can see Toorop’s demeanor change around the two, growing fond of them. Though this mission becomes riskier by the minute, it was a mission he doesn’t regret having because we know it will change his outlook on life for the better. They need each other, and it’s during this moment we can truly feel it. It gives us a much bigger appreciation for him when he shows his heroic qualities waiting to burst through the surface as he becomes more and more of a guardian of this woman.
Now, I know Diesel’s Toorop is supposed to be a cool antihero, but I hated the interaction with Karl in the beginning of the film. Once the dude shows up and pulls a gun on him, Toorop clowns him for “killing babies” in Sudan and has the audacity to call Karl a “disgrace to the profession”. He’s talking about the mercenary profession, a job that has you kill whoever you’re paid to kill. Do we not see the irony here? Sure, killing babies is awful, but Toorop is a mercenary too! I’m supposed to agree with this statement because Karl’s version of killing isn’t honorable enough for Vin Diesel?
Kindly fuck off.
Also, to end the exchange, he kills Karl anyway. Good job, Mr. Honorable Mercenary.
I don’t know much about Melanie Thierry, but she did very well in the role of the oblivious and innocent-eyed Aurora. Even in the emotional scenes and such, she had this quality about her that really nailed how the character was written. The submarine scene (“I feel them dying!”) was a great example of this. You can feel her anxiety and desperation boiling over like no other. For what Thierry was asked to do, I thought she did an excellent job.
Then, the second half of the film happened. I was okay with New York looking like the complete opposite landscape-wise compared to the dreary European and Asian countries we see, but things started off weird as soon as they arrive at night and Toorop is wearing his sunglasses. While inside some apartment, they see on the television that Rebeka and Aurora’s convent was destroyed by a missile. This is probably the most important emotional moment of the movie because it shows how Aurora and Rebeka narrowly escaped death and how they’re the last of their group. Toorop is also affected by it because this is enough to reveal to him this is no ordinary mission and someone important wants Aurora dead. The moment is ruined however because Vin Diesel’s clear insistence in wearing these outrageous, movie star-like sunglasses. We can’t even see how it affects him personally because his eyes are covered. He’s just staring at the screen blankly. Why would you do this as an actor for one of the most important scenes of the movie? Following this, we get an awesome climactic shootout where Toorop is handicapped because the passport in his body has a tracker for the missile being shot at them. He frantically jumps through the windshield of a van, runs out the back, and closes the door. This forces the missile to blow up the van, but he’s spared.
What bothers me is that Toorop walks away from this huge moment completely unscathed, despite this van blowing up a foot from his body. How the hell are his clothes not even the slightest bit tattered? He doesn’t have the powers Aurora possesses! He’s a normal guy! He needed to take some damage! What would’ve helped in this moment in time was him looking like John McClane would at the end of a Die Hard movie. He’d still be good to fight, but he should look like he just escaped a massive explosion (because he did). He needed to limp over to Aurora and Rebeka and look like he was using every ounce of his strength to stay alive and protect the two in this massive gunfight. It would’ve won us over even more as an audience. This makes the pivotal second missile’s destruction make even less sense because this missile avoids him entirely because of Aurora’s solution, exploding directly in front of her face but avoids her because of her powers. Now, she’s a few feet separated from Toorop but based off of this movie’s logic, he should be relatively okay because he survived a much worse explosion minutes earlier. However (SPOILERS, SPOILERS, SPOILERS), he wakes up in a hospital with his arm messed up and a robotic leg, as he was put back together like Robocop. How did he take this damage the second time around when he was further away compared to the first time?
Once this happened, and further explanation was given about Aurora’s technical father being a mad scientist, Aurora being birthed from a supercomputer (with this being the explanation as to why she can process information so quickly), Aurora’s virgin birth of twins (which was revealed after the doctor visit but still), and the twist with the Neolite church thing, I was totally lost. I understood what was happening, but my interest was gone. It felt like a completely different movie following this explosion. I had zero reaction when we’re shown the warring arguments between the High Priestess of the Neolite Church (Rampling) and Gorsky. The mad scientist father came off as weird too, so when he was arguing with the High Priestess, I could not give less of a fuck as to what was going on at that point. All the characters pulling the strings beyond our principle main characters were one-dimensional, boring, and unlikable. Sadly, the payoff was more about them. If you wanted me to give a fuck about the High Priestess, you needed to introduce her much quicker in the film instead of an hour in, especially if they considered her that important to the overall story. She needed to cross paths with Toorop or Aurora too. Hell, I would’ve accepted Sister Rebeka facing off with her. I felt like this was a given. They make the High Priestess this despicable person in short order, so when they rebuild Toorop, you think he’s about to take her out to make the movie come full circle in Aurora’s memory, but none of it happens.
The High Priestess lives on to continue her bullshit message, and Toorop is stuck raising Aurora’s kids. It’s supposed to be a happy ending in a way, but since we know the High Priestess never got her comeuppance, why are we supposed to be satisfied with this? She doesn’t even have to be shot by Toorop. As long as she was exposed as the corrupt church leader she was, it could’ve worked. Sadly, we just accept Toorop is cool with how things turned out, and it doesn’t sit right with me.
Babylon A.D. did well as an action vehicle for Vin Diesel and would’ve been decent had they stuck to the formula that was working in the first half of movie. Once they tried to deviate from the regular sci-fi action and became more than that, with inexplicable twists and turns coming from all angles after the last shootout, it falls apart. All the super sci-fi tech and convoluted story elements introduced in the last half hour or so felt like a different type of science fiction movie in general. It didn’t fit the tone of the movie we were introduced to in the beginning. Everything that worked at first felt undone, and the story ended in a very awkward and unsatisfying manner.
It’s a weird thing to say that Babylon A.D. would’ve benefitted by shooting for average rather than the stars, but the final product makes me think the movie would’ve been passable fare had they not try to go any deeper than “sci-fi action movie with Vin Diesel”.
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