Babylon AD: Vin Diesel's Perfect Role

I'm not ashamed to admit I don't go see Vin Diesel movies for the cultural content.  I go because he will take off at least his shirt at some point in the film and show that chiseled chest....or whatever part happens to see light.  In spite of his monotone voice, Diesel can emote surprisingly at times.  In 'Babylon A.D.', Mr. Diesel returns to his recipe for success which is the quiet but deadly bad guy with a heart.  My rating:  $7.00 (1.-10.).

I the future it would seem we are destined to all live in cities that are so overpopulated that people have become virtual cockroaches crawling over each other in squalor.  'Blade Runner' was one of the first such dank predictors for our destruction of Mother Earth.  Babylon would be the Biblical city of idolatry and chaos where man was cursed by his own arrogance to being cast to the far corners of the world speaking in every type of language.  Not such a far cry from the future of the world where criminals run everything, propagandists control thinking through the media (OK, even more than today), and only the ones with might survive. 

Vin Diesel plays Toorup, a bad guy who has tried to go underground out of the business.  He's pulled back in by a fat 'Russian' criminal with a grotesquely distorted nose named, Gorsky (played by Frenchman Gerard Depardieu, if you can believe it).  Toorup has to smuggle a young girl into the U.S. within 6 days -- no other explanation.  Plenty of money and re-entry into the U.S. are his incentives (not to mention death if he didn't ) since he's on the terrorist list, banished years before. 

The young girl is Aurora (Melanie Theirry - French, you'll recognize her face but not much of her work unless you go to the Naro a lot).  She can sense things.  She spoke at 2 years of age...... in 19 languages.  Ah, yes, a manufactured DNA person.  Michelle Yeoh plays Sister Rebeka from a convent isolated high in the mountains who has raised Aurora from infancy.  Yeoh has so much talent to lend.  I'm often surprised at how often she is in 'B' and 'C' movies. 

As the 3 travel to America, there are plenty of explosions, gunfights, and hand-to-hand combat.  The script is formulaic in its attempt to make both sides not seem entirely bad so we stay confused about who we want to get Aurora in the end.  The action is fun enough to forgive the film's writers. 

Charlotte Rampling, a talented woman whose movies started back in 1966 with 'Georgy Girl', has a cameo as the High Priestess of the same sisterhood from which Rebeka has come, the Neolites.  She's trying to protect Aurora.  But is it in Aurora's best interest or not?   

Lambert Wilson plays Darquandier, the man who developed the technology to create Aurora.  He and all his followers consider him Aurora's father.  He died years before defending Aurora.  Uh, don't forget, this is sci-fi.  He's got a few human parts but he's alive even if mostly held together by nuts and bolts.  His abilities are necessary in the script to get Aurora and Toorup where they need to be at the end of the movie.

Now there are 4 guys given credit for writing that brought 'Babylon A.D.' to the big screen.  Maurice Dantec wrote the novel and Eric Besnard is a 'writer'.  The screenplay credit goes to Joseph Simas and Matthew Kassovitz.  Kassovitz (another French guy) also produced and directed.  The run time is 90 minutes of action with very few lulls.  It's rated PG-13 --- that means it would have been 'R' five years

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