One and one-half out of four stars (Rated PG-13 for violence and language) Running time: 91 minutes. Reviewed at The Woodlands Tinseltown 17 on August 29.
There’s good news and bad news for the Vin Diesel fans out there. The good news is that “Fast & Furious,” the sequel to “The Fast and the Furious” action film, will be coming out next spring.
The bad news is that until then Diesel fans have to sit through the futuristic sci-fi stinkbomb called “Babylon A.D.”
Diesel is the brawny type with a shaved down to the noogie coiffure and the manners of a nightclub bouncer. He certainly talks like one, grunting out words that make Sylvester Stallone sound more like Sir Laurence Olivier. One of his earlier roles was as the voice of the extraterrestrial robot in the animated “Iron Giant” about ten years ago. Diesel should have quit while he was ahead in the elocution department.
So what do they do with Diesel this time? Let him talk—a lot. And as if the gruff dialogue isn’t bad enough, the action scenes are merely adequate compared to say, “The Bourne Ultimatum.” And the script, adapted from French writer Maurice G. Dentec’s “Babylon Babies,” makes little sense.
Pity the director, the otherwise superb Mathieu Kassovitz (“Gothika”), who publicly ridiculed the suits at Twentieth Century Fox for editing the movie down from its underlying philosophic meaning into a violence-driven action flick. Well, casting Vin Diesel in the lead didn’t help matters.
Diesel plays the mercenary Toorop in a post-apocalyptic Russia in 2017 or later (the book takes place in 2013). He is taken at gunpoint by a SWAT team to meet with a Russian gangster named Gorsky (Gerard Depardieu, wearing a bulbous prosthetic nose that dwarfs Jackie Chan’s).
All Toorop has to do is carry a package to New York. Ah, but the “package” is a spacey babe named Aurora (Melanie Thierry). She’s housed at a convent in Mongolia (plot spoiler coming), sought after by a cult for her body parts to be made into a genetically altered messiah or some religious mumbo jumbo like that.
Together with a kick-boxer nun named Sister Rebeka (Michelle Yeoh), the threesome make their way by car, train, plane, and submarine to New York. But not before Rebeka lays down the law to Diesel on how he is to conduct himself during the sojourn.
Rebeka: “Third rule—no bad language.”
Toorop: “My one and only rule—don’t (bleep) with me.”
Now that doesn’t leave much room for discussion, but Diesel manages to fill the air with some real gems: “Look lady, I’m a delivery boy—you’re a package.” This is not Arthur Miller material here, folks.
When they finally arrive in the Big Apple, all lit up with neon lights, the wheels come off. Before then Diesel punches the bejabbers out of countless thugs and fills them all with more than his fair share of lead. There are several chase scenes that a B grade in quality with gunfire and explosions that lead to shrugs.
Venerable actress Charlotte Rampling, playing the Priestess of the cult, shows up several times anxiously awaiting word on the arrival of Aurora. She’s method acting as though in great distress, but it could be her reaction to the script we’re actually seeing.
Diesel sums it all up when he narrates early on, “Too bad it was the day I died.” Was he referring to his character, or his career?
