Written by Andre Dellamorte

There is a cut of Babylon AD that is around three hours. That is not what appears on this disc. Instead, you have a 101 minute version, which is longer than the theatrical cut (90 min.) but nowhere near complete.

Vin Diesel stars as Toorop. Seriously, that’s the character’s name. He’s got to deliver a hot young girl (Mélanie Thierry) to New York, and possibly as a terrorist agent. Toorop’s accompanied by Michelle Yeoh, who’s also an ass kicking nun helping him. People are chasing them, and there’s an evil plot that revoles around the special girl and her role in the universe. Bad guys are played by Gerard Depardieu, and Charlotte Rampling.

Part The Fifth Element, part boring, I feel bad reviewing Mathieu Kassovitz’s film because he got foxed on this title. Whatever they thought they could have or save got edited into a million pieces, so even the action scenes aren’t that thrilling and good actors go to waste. I like much of the cast, but all you get from Depardieu is the prostetic work, which is not all that great to begin with. It’s fun to see him show up in something like this, but it also emphasizes that this is like some sort of Eurotrash bullshit.  It’s not much of a movie, but there are enough Sci-Fi elements in the whole to make me think that there may have been a real movie here at some point.

Instead what’s on screen suggests something worked over like the meat in the first Rocky film, something beaten and cut to the point of flavorlessness. Something that went past the point of tenderization. But again, Kasoovitz went public with the bumming he took on this, and it’s fox, so it’s fair to take the French director’s side. Whether there was ever a good movie here is hard to tell, but the ideas aren’t without merit.

That said, Fox presents the Blu-ray version in the unrated cut, in 1080p, widescreen (2.35:1) and in DTS-HD. It looks and sounds excellent. There’s a PIP view which shows behind the scenes footage, to which can be viewed on its own (50 min.), and four behind the scenes pieces (37 min.) on the making of and focuses specifically on the stunts. Not a good sign. There’s also a comic prequel (6 min.), along with a deleted action scene (2 min.), still galleries and bonus trailers.