In many respects Vin Diesel has taken over from Arnie as the action movie guy. You know, more or less, what you are going to get – the gruff voice and muscle-bound action that never gets too deep but generally delivers on visceral entertainment. Vin, like Arnie, had his breakthrough role that he has revisited, and also tried his hand at comedy in THE PACIFIER, a movie not that dissimilar to KINDERGARTEN COP. He has also tried something a little deeper. Vin’s latest, BABYLON A.D. is his END OF DAYS, an action movie with pretensions of religious allegory.
Probably the easiest way to describe this movie is xXx meets CHILDREN OF MEN. Vin is Toorop, a mercenary with his own moral code, living in dystopian world that has already gone over the brink of social collapse. Exiled from the US he survives as a soldier of fortune in Russia and Eastern Europe. He is given the task of escorting and smuggling a young woman (Mélanie Thierry) and her guardian (Michelle Yeoh) across the Bering Straight into Canada and down to New York. This journey gives the trio plenty of time to bond and get involved in action-packed chases.
The film borrows motifs from similar genre films, such as when they arrive in New York and we are shown an aerial shot of the city that looks like it’s straight out of BLADE RUNNER. Whereas DOOMSDAY was obviously derivative, its tongue was firmly in its cheek, but as a French co-production, directed and co-written by Mathieu Kassovitz (LA HAINE), this film does have a tendency to take itself a bit too seriously, especially when it starts to get religion. It’s a pity that it doesn’t quite work because it has some great acting talent in support with the likes of Gerard Depardieu, Charlotte Rampling, Mark Strong and Lambert Wilson (Merovingian from MATRIX RELOADED, but thankfully we are spared the long pseudo-intellectual explanatory speeches this time – they are there but briefer and simpler to understand) but you never really care about the characters. There are some great action sequences from the Belle Parkour Team and also an impressive snowmobile chase but these and the human drama aspects of the film never really seem to gel.
With so many interesting and original sci-fi films coming out of France recently – EDEN LOG, CHRYSALIS, DANTE 01 – this one seems to be pandering too much to a dumbed-down US audience to make the big ideas work. It’s not a bad movie; it’s just not a good movie. If you have one of those Cineworld passes and want to see an action film this weekend then it’s your best bet but there are more interesting films on release this weekend and the smaller cinemas that are worth catching – BEN X, SAKURAN and THE WACKNESS.
Review: Chris Patmore