Babylon A.D.

Although based on Maurice George Dantec’s sci-fi novel "Babylon Babies" "Babylon A.D." comes across as an undercooked retooling of Alfonso Cuaron’s much better 2006 film "Children of Men." Vin Diesel plays Toorop a mercenary living in a near-future Kazakhstan who takes an offer he can’t refuse from Russian kingpin Gorsky (played by Gerard Depardieu) to transport a young woman named Aurora to New York, along with her convent chaperone Sister Rebeka (played by Michelle Yeoh). James Bond-styled snowmobile chase sequences, marital arts displays, and gratuitous gun battles follow the trio on their 6,000 mile journey that fizzles out with an ending that hardly ties together any of the story’s vague narrative threads. Charlotte Rampling plays a High Priestess of commerce whose face is inexplicably plastered on giant digital billboards in a seemingly unfinished film by French director Mathieu Kassovitz. Even the most forgiving sci-fi fans will have a hard time making sense of "Babylon A.D."

(20^th Century Fox) PG-13. 90 mins. (C-)