Review: Babylon A.D. (12A)

2:35pm Friday 29th August 2008

Comments (0)   Have your say »

Starring: Vin Diesel, Melanie Thierry, Michelle Yeoh, Charlotte Rampling, Lambert Wilson, Mark Strong. Director: Mathieu Kassovitz.

FROM its downbeat opening monologue — “Save the planet? What for?” — Babylon A.D. imagines an environmentally ravaged world teetering on the brink of catastrophe.

Mankind’s fate rests on the hulking shoulders of action star Vin Diesel (The Fast And The Furious, xXx), which guarantees an inordinately high body count and several spectacular explosions before the end of the world or the end credits, whichever comes sooner.

Worryingly, the leading man’s growling, one-note performance is more compelling than most of his co-stars, including the usually luminous Charlotte Rampling.

Her stilted portrayal of a religious leader with visions of grandeur elicits almost as much unintentional hilarity as the hare-brained plot.

Writer-director Mathieu Kassovitz and co-writer Joseph Simas punctuate the meandering storyline, based on the novel Babylon’s Babies by Maurice G Dantec, with some decent action sequences including a high-speed skidoo chase and a brawl in a crowded club.

Diesel faces each twist and turn with his usual muscular indifference, arming himself to the polished teeth because, “You can never have enough firepower.””A mantra for life.

Mercenary for hire Toorop (Diesel) is offered one of the most lucrative contracts of his inglorious career: to escort a young woman, Aurora from a convent in Mongolia to New York.

Toorop accepts but is forced to alter his usual routine when Aurora’s protector, Sister Rebecca (Yeoh), insists on accompanying her ward on the dangerous expedition.

Add in the fact that the young woman’s supposedly dead father is waiting for an opportunity to snatch Aurora and the quickly realises that the young nun is not what she seems.

Babylon A.D. melds elements of The Transporter and the fantasy Children Of Men, treating each leg of the journey as a self-contained set piece, including an explosion at a train station and a scramble to board a submarine before it descends beneath the ice.

While Rampling and many of the supporting cast embrace the material with deadly seriousness, Diesel at least has a twinkle in his eye, suggesting he recognises the script for the nonsense it really is.