Vin Diesel waited three years for this?!?
Image Courtesy of IMPawards.com
Director: Mathieu Kassovitz
Notable Cast: Vin Diesel, Michelle Yeoh, Mélanie Thierry, Gérard Depardieu, Charlotte Rampling, Mark Strong, Lambert Wilson
Action film stars have a certain hierarchy. A generation ago, it was a fairly simple one. Arnold Schwarzenegger ruled all, Sylvester Stallone wasn’t far behind, Harrison Ford made plenty of great films and niche stars like Chuck Norris and Jean Claude Van Damme maintained their own significant fan bases. At the turn of the century, the hierarchy seemed to be ready for a shakeup. Once upon a time, Vin Diesel was poised to join Will Smith and Nicolas Cage on top of the modern action movie pantheon.
With two franchises in the making with The Fast and the Furious and Pitch Black, as well as xXx showing potential as well, Diesel had everything going or him. A unique charisma, a chiseled body and enough savvy to pick good roles consistently, he seemed to be on the right path. And when The Chronicles of Riddick, the sequel to Pitch Black came out, it seemed as if it was the beginning of a prolific career. What happened? The Pacifier, that’s what happened.
Since then, he made little seen Find Me Guilty and filmed a cameo in the third Fast and the Furious film. He really hasn’t done much, though, and three years after his last action film comes Babylon, A.D., a film that shows plenty of potential but ultimately feels like its missing at least an hour of material.
Babylon, A.D. features Diesel as Toorop, a mercenary for hire in the former Soviet Union. Hired to smuggle out a girl named Aurora (Melanie Thierry) and her protector (Michelle Yeoh) into the United States by any means necessary, he finds redemption for a life lived doing dirty deeds. But all isn’t what it appears to be as Aurora exhibits some unusual talents that leave her being wanted by several parties. Toorop has to keep them both alive while balancing out his own conscious as well.
And for a while, the film has all the making of being the sort of epic, action film with science-fiction sensibilities that Diesel could’ve used a couple years ago. This has all the potential a film about a dire future should be; with a washed out look and some quality action scenes as well. The film is a bit derivative of Children of Men, as it looks an awful lot like it, but it goes for more of an action sensibility than the dramatic one Clive Owen’s film sought.
But something doesn’t seem right with the film, which goes for barely 90 minutes. The film is going for a slow, epic pace that suddenly speeds up midway through the second act. Mathieu Kassovitz, who disowned the film throughout its initial public relations run, clearly had what could’ve been a terrific film cut up in the editing room. He’s clearly aiming for a two hour pace, if not more, and the film feels like a huge chunk of it is missing. This is an incomplete film, and that feeling permeates the entire film for the most part.
Babylon A.D. is another film on Vin Diesel’s record of unfulfilled potential.
