Granted there are only six reviews, but when a film’s tomatometer debut racks up a worrying 0%, and those review blurbs don’t exactly look as though they were just shy of fresh, it’s time for damage control.  As standard practice would dictate, you (director, star, co-star, producer, studio, whatever) promote the movie as though nothing is wrong, keep your head down and barrel through opening weekend and hope for strong enough returns that the film isn’t a total waste.  Looks like someone didn’t get the memo.

Mathieu Kassovitz (“Gothika”), director of the upcoming Vin Diesel sci-fi film “Babylon A.D.”, said in an interview with AMCtv.com that the film was “Pure violence and stupidity,” and parts of the film resembled “a bad episode of ‘24’.”  Yikes.  He blames Fox for “sending in lawyers who were looking at all the commas and the dots,” making “everything difficult from A to Z.”  So....they proofread?

Because of his disdain for the studio’s handling of the film, Kassovitz has refused to fulfill any of his press obligations promoting “Babylon A.D.”, and has instead fired his representation and gone on vacation in the Caribbean.  This has obviously not gone over well with Fox or the overseas distributors handling the film.

In the end, when one of your soldiers goes AWOL, you still have to complete the mission, and Fox is doing just that.  They are hard at work promoting the film, which they say will play well with young men.  Vin Diesel is also hard at work promoting the film, and they are hoping for an opening weekend akin to that of “Death Race”, which pulled in $12.6 million.  I think with that PG-13 rating, that number could actually be a bit higher.