Babylon A.D.

I've just seen Babylon AD in Paris and i must say this is a terrible and disappointing movie and only because of the screenplay. I must say french director Mathieu Kassovitz has done a very decent job by directing the movie. The actors are good, the production design is good and even the special effects are quite stunning. But how did you miss the most important key element in a movie: The screenplay! The reaction that i had at the end of the film was: What ? That's it ? What's the point ? Where is the deep reflexion that you must find in a good Sci FI movie ?

Please give to Kassovitz a very good script because i know he can do a great film. And he is one the few french director who can direct a movie as the American does when they achieve greatness. I know he can do better. He must !

It was decent. The action sequences were definitely a bit choppy, especially the first one. Also, there were a few times when I had to go "Is that even physically possible?" and the ending left a few loose ends still left, so I was sort of disappointed with that.

If you don't pay attention, you will hate this movie. It moves fairly quickly, so once you miss something, it's gone and you will be lost. So pay attention. The story is actually pretty good and actually feels down to earth, which is more than I can say about quite a few sci-fi movies.

For the record, I went into this movie not expecting much more than average, and I was slightly surprised. If you go in expecting the next academy award winner, you will completely despise it. It is no Dark Knight, so don't expect it to be. There's not much there artistically, so, if you don't like a movie simply trying to be entertaining for the sake of being entertaining, then you won't like this one. All in all, it was a good watch, not entirely worth the price for a new movie, so I suggest waiting until it comes to the cheaper theaters (if you have one near by).

As another note (and I'll probably get some heat for this) I actually enjoy Vin Diesel as an actor. This is not his best performance, but it's certainly not his worst (even though I still moderately enjoyed Chronicles of Riddick, I admit it was pretty bad and to this day I still don't know why I like it.) I think Diesel is good at what he does, although he really hasn't been in anything that really blows me away, even my favorite Diesel film (Pitch Black) wasn't completely stunning, but it was really good. With that in mind, this is a Vin Diesel movie, so, if you're not like me and you don't like Diesel, you will not like this movie and should just steer clear of it.

I should say first that I don't know the book this movie is adapted from, so I just mean to give an opinion on the movie itself and the way it's handled.

Director Mathieu Kassovitz has been in the business for a while now and is a well complete actor as well and still something about this project went wrong. The story itself seems solid - and somewhat I can imagine the book being just great - but the movie looks rushed with only the most important and visual parts shown.

Actually, it's a kind of annoying experience as you can see how really good it could have been if they only did a better job on the background and the storytelling instead of mixing everything from the book in an action packed movie. Now being totally honest, the action isn't great at all thanks to the shaky hand cam effect (The Bourne Legacy I guess ...) and uninspired choreography. Same goes for the acting : Depardieu and Wilson are easily the worst : they would have read the script for the first time it wouldn't have surprise me.

Considering all the good material it certainly feels like a misproduction, someone said the director and actor Vin Diesel were having different opinions and I do hope the latter won because if Kassovitz did it the way he wanted I'd be really disappointed.

We've been awarded with such great movies around the same kind of subject (Children of Men to name one) that this one seems pale compared to those.

I fortunately watched Babylon A.D. first from the net and it seems it was (unfortunately) the wiser thing to do because it was the longer cut! Babylon A.D. is not a bad movie even with the 90 minute version but it lacks heavily what the longer cut offers.

I was mostly disappointed (therefore rating 6 which would've been 8++ something otherwise) about the ending of the shorter version which really sucks if you have seen the other one (i did think that here in Europe they would automatically release the 160 min version but no..). Money wasted on that 'cos I was not expecting this kind of cut.

Nevertheless I still enjoyed the plot, the visuals and the very stylized world what this movie brought to the table. The action scenes were also enjoyable. Hopefully Hopefully the better version will be released on DVD! Shame on you studios for not giving this movie the respect it deserves!

Wtf.

Do you like headaches? Do you wake up everyday saying "Today sure is a great day to see a movie that could have been great, but I'd rather be confused!" Well then go see this movie! I don't really know what else to say, you can't really rate a movie as good, or bad, unless there is a movie to rate. It was so jumbled around with drastic scene changes, a plot that you don't even understand at the end of the movie, and uhhh, be prepared to be in an altered state of mind when you go to see it, maybe then you'll think you get it. Otherwise you're gonna hate this movie.