When a director vehemently disses his own movie, as Babylon A.D.'s Mathieu Kassovitz did recently, the natural reaction for a moviegoers would be to lower one's expectations. "It's pure violence and stupidity," he told an entertainment writer for AMCtv.com. "I'm very unhappy with the film � The script wasn't respected � It was a terrible experience."
But to invert the old cliché, one man's poison can be another man's meat. Just because Kassovitz has issues with the way French novelist Maurice G. Dantec's 1999 sci-fi thriller "Babylon Babies" was manhandled into a movie and then dumped into the black hole of Labour Day weekend is no reason why you shouldn�t kick back and enjoy it.
For one thing, it stars Vin Diesel, whose movies have proved that violence and stupidity can be fast, furious and moderately entertaining. Here he plays Toorop, a freelance mercenary hired by a grotesque Russian crime lord named Gorsky (Gérard Depardieu, made up to look his worst) to transport a young woman from a convent in Mongolia to a mysterious client in New York.
Named Aurora, she's accompanied on the trek from Asia through the former Soviet Union, across the icebound Bering Straight to Kitimat, Canada, and then on to the Big Rotten Apple, by a nun named Sister Rebeka, played by Michelle Yeoh, which of course means that the good sister knows martial arts. This pugilistic skill comes in mighty handy, as Toorop has a way of finding trouble like a heat-seeking missile. Speaking of which, there are real heat-seeking missiles, too, which means lots of things blow up good.
The storyline, as Kossovitz would surely agree, is gibberish; it has something to do with the timeless battle between science and religion. The fun, and there's plenty, is delivered by a series of impressive fights and chase scenes, taking place either in a grim, dystopian post-Soviet Eastern Europe that seems like one giant, derelict oil refinery, or in a sleek, neon-lit Manhattan that owes a visual debt to the production designers for Minority Report.
Derivative, nonsensical and cool to look at, it's not nearly the disappointment Kossovitz would have you believe, although it's eminently forgettable 10 minutes after leaving the theatre.
