Despite our best efforts to reach in time to catch the latest Leonardo Di Caprio and Russell Crowe CIA flick, Delhi’s traffic had already made up its mind to play killjoy.
Hence movie aficionados us had to make-do with the second choice – Babylon AD.
And a poor choice it turned out, might I add.
The movie started fairly well - not exactly keeping-one-glued-to-one’s-seat-stuff, but passable fare nevertheless.
Till after intermission, when it started the tanking and the tanking-hard routine.
So you have a heavily tattooed Vin Diesel (he has a sigil tatoo, for God’s sake, on the right side of his neck), playing the role of Hugo Cornelius Toorop (let’s just call him Toorop), a mercenary. He’s hired on a mission to transport a package (Aurora - played by 27 year old Mélanie Thierry), from Eastern Europe to New York.
Sounds like a simple case of a mercenary protecting and delivering a blue-eyed, innocent, hormonally-charged teen?
You couldn’t be more wrong.
‘Cos Aurora has been cloistered in a Noelite Convent all her life, and has the uncanny ability to prophesy the truth. Except that she only spells pictures of doom. Her Japanese guardian nun, Sister Rebeka (the eternally-elegant Michelle Yeoh), revelas how, when Aurora was barely 2, could speak as many as 19 languages. And often acted strangely, more so after a Noelite doctor had administered a pill to her.
Things take a turn for a science fiction twist then, when it is revealed that Aurora is a sort of biological weapon. She was genetically enhanced as a foetus by one Dr. Arthur Darquandier (Lambert Wilson), who ‘implanted’ super intelligence into her brain. This doctor considers her as his child.
Aurora also has a so-called ‘mother’ – the wicked High Priestess (Charlotte Rampling), who is looking for an opprtune moment to reveal her as the miracle of the Noelite group. The High Priestess had made Dr. Arthur program Aurora in such a way that she was to become impregnated despite being a virgin, thus propagating a modern day Virgin Mary analogy and a Messiah figure for the Noelite religion.
Popping guns, snowmobiles that whizz past the gleaming Russian snow, a cybernetics twist, revival after death, a lacklustre Vin Diesel, a wasted Michelle Yeoh, arctic tundras that freeze your mind, a passport that is to be injected under the skin of the neck, bombings, tracking rockets – this movie has them all – but will eventually, do one of these thigns to you:
a) Put you to sleep
b) Make you glare into your tub of butter popcorn
c) Make you delve into your or your companion’s bag for an aspirin
d) Make you swear off Vin Diesel for a long time
I should know. I did (b) and (d)
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