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Punt or Pass?


Babylon A.D. (BABLN) is the latest film to bring doom unto a futuristic mankind. Vin Diesel (VDIES), Michelle Yeoh (MYEOH) and Charlotte Rampling (CRAMP) star.

Diesel plays a mercenary named Troop who is supposed to escort a young girl named Aurora from Eastern Europe to the big Apple. Troop thinks this is an ordinary job but soon realizes that everyone wants to get their hands on the young Aurora. He begins to ascertain that Aurora is the carrier of an organism that has the potential to give her great powers, making her the next Messiah. By the time Troop realizes what the situation is, they are on the run from various individuals. It's difficult to figure out who is a friend and who is a foe.

Babylon A.D is visually very appealing with Diesel being its main attaction, who is also visually, very appealing. But with the horde of doomsday films out in recent years, it seems this one may fall short in the story-telling category. The film is directed by Mathieu Kassovitz who has directed Gothika and the critically acclaimed La Haine. He is also known for appearing in Munich alongside Eric Bana (EBANA). Kassovitz who directs from a little known novel called 'Babylon Babies,' has publicly distanced himself from this film.

Can Babylon A.D. measure up to recent films like Doomsday and possibly Children of Men? Fox hopes a curious audience will come out to check out the flick.

To help you decide if Babylon A.D. is a Punt of Pass? we examine two films about the end of the world, one that Kassovitz has directed and one in which he acted and two about characters needing protection from an evil world.


researched and written by Afshan Farooqui
AT WORLD'S END   THE WORK OF MATHIEU   PROTECTING THE GIFTED  

Doomsday (2008)
Budget: N/A
Opening: $4M
Gross: $11M

After a virus spreads through the British Isles, hundreds of millions of people get infected and die. Fear and chaos is rampant and the authorities in control quarantine those who are still safe. The virus is contained for about thirty years, when it rears its ugly head again. A team of specialists must venture through a no man's land to find a cure before the virus sweeps again. Their journey turns into a brutal nightmare.

28 Weeks Later (2007)
Budget: N/A
Opening: $9M
Gross: $28M

This was the sequel to the well-liked 28 Days Later. This film picks up six months after the first one ends where the survivors repopulate in a safe area of quarantined London. Everything is hunky dory until someone unknowingly passes off the virus which begins to spread again, only this time stronger and deadlier.

 

Munich (2005)
Budget: $70M
Opening: $7M
Gross: $47M

Eric Bana is the Israeli officer in charge of hunting down the perpetrators of the massacres of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. His mission of death becomes a lonely one as he ends up paying with his life to the organization that hired him. Kassovitz plays one of the Mossad agents.

Gothika (2003)
Budget: $40M
Opening: $19M
Gross: $59M

Halle Berry donned zero makeup and psych ward garb after waking up as a patient in the mental institution when she was employed. A bad day at work turns into a living nightmare when she is unable to remember how she got there. Penelope Cruz also stars as an inmate at the asylum who may have clues as to what happened.

 

Children of Men (2006)
Budget: $76M
Opening: $10M
Gross: $35M

Clive Owen was gallant as he beat himself ragged trying to save the only pregnant woman on the planet. The human race had been incapable of reproducing due to pollution and other factors. When one young girl becomes pregnant, her safety becomes everyone's concern. This film presented a world devoid of hope and full of chaos. But poor Owen went through hell in order to bring some light to the spreading darkness.

Ultraviolet (2006)
Budget: $30M
Opening: $9M
Gross: $18M

Milla Jovovich plays a woman known as a hemophage who is infected with a virus that gives her superhuman powers. She becomes the protector of a young boy who is thought to have antigens which can kill all hemophages.