{"id":29399,"date":"2022-04-11T10:50:00","date_gmt":"2022-04-11T14:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=29399"},"modified":"2022-04-11T10:52:26","modified_gmt":"2022-04-11T14:52:26","slug":"29399","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=29399","title":{"rendered":"“Babylon A.D.” (2008) \/ Z-View"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Babylon A.D. <\/strong><\/em>(2008)<\/p>\n

Director:\u00a0 Mathieu Kassovitz<\/strong><\/p>\n

Writers:\u00a0 Mathieu Kassovitz<\/strong> & Joseph Simas<\/strong> (screenplay) with \u00c9ric Besnard<\/strong> (scenario and dialogue) based on the novel by Maurice G. Dantec.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Starring:\u00a0 Vin Diesel, Michelle Yeoh, M\u00e9lanie Thierry, G\u00e9rard Depardieu\u00a0<\/strong>and Charlotte Rampling<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Tagline:\u00a0\u00a0 Save the World One Child at a Time.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Overview:\u00a0 Beware of Spoilers\u2026<\/p>\n

In the near future, Toorop (Diesel), is an exiled American mercenary living in a dangerous gang-ridden Russian slum.\u00a0 Toorop is hired to safely transport Aurora (Thierry) and her guardian (Yeoh) across the war torn continent and sneak them into the United States.\u00a0 Under the best circumstances this would be a tough gig, but the fact that two different organizations have sent armed teams to kidnap Aurora for vastly different reasons makes survival unlikely.<\/p>\n

Babylon A.D.<\/em> is an under-rated and flawed film that I absolutely love.\u00a0 Bad weather, budget over-runs, problems\u00a0 between the director and 20th Century Fox all contributed to the end result.\u00a0 20th Century Fox released a drastically cut (reports range from 15 to 93 minutes shorter than the director’s cut) theatrical version with almost zero publicity.\u00a0 In 2011, Mathieu Kassovitz released a behind the scenes documentary of the troubled production called Fucking Kassovitz.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>I’ve seen the documentary.\u00a0 It is clear that problems with the production team meeting the director’s vision were enormous.<\/p>\n

With that said, I still love Babylon A.D.<\/em>\u00a0 It has scope, vision and attempts to rise above the action genre film.\u00a0 There’s so much to love.\u00a0 The opening with Toorop in the Russian slum.\u00a0 Gorsky (Depardieu), the Russian crime lord’s method of getting Toorop on board.\u00a0 How Gorsky gets Toorop to the convent to pick-up Aurora.\u00a0 Slowly seeing that there is more to Aurora than meets the eye.\u00a0 The gradual development of respect and then friendship between Toorop and Sister Rebeka (Yeoh).\u00a0 The parkour fighters.\u00a0 Toorop “rescuing” Aurora from the monster cage fighter.\u00a0 The submarine scene.\u00a0 Escaping the drones.\u00a0 The New York showdown and more.<\/p>\n

Babylon A.D.<\/em> is not a great movie.\u00a0 As I said at the start, it is flawed.\u00a0 But I love what they did get on film.\u00a0 I’ve watched Babylon A.D.<\/em> several times over the years and like it better with each viewing.\u00a0 This is one where I expect the mileage will differ from mine with many viewers.\u00a0 Why not give it a shot and see?\u00a0 As for me, I rate Babylon A.D.<\/em> five of five stars.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Babylon A.D. (2008) Director:\u00a0 Mathieu Kassovitz Writers:\u00a0 Mathieu Kassovitz & Joseph Simas (screenplay) with \u00c9ric Besnard (scenario and dialogue) based<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,54,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-celebs","category-movies","category-z-view"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29399"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29405,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29399\/revisions\/29405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}