By Cole Smithey
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."
I sat down with Vin at a mid-town Manhattan hotel to talk about "Babylon A.D." and his other movie projects.
CS: Your character Toorop has issues with trust. Do you have trust issues in your personal life?
VD: I always have issues. I’m a New Yorker. I always have issues with trust—you adopt it from being a New Yorker.
CS: What does it take for you to trust someone?
VD: The logical answer is time, experience. But really, I think trust is something that comes from the gut. I don’t think it’s anything specific. I don’t think it’s anything tangible.
CS: What made you want to play this mercenary terrorist character.
VD: In Cannes in 1995, which was the first time I’d ever been written up as an artist, "La Haine" had won and he (Matthieu Kassovitz) had seen "Strays" and felt an affinity with that film. There’s something interesting about doing a movie with the trappings of an action film helmed by a French director. That felt unique. To play a character like Toorop, that’s a cynic and not trusting—there’s a part of that in all of us–to exercise that to its fullest felt exciting.
This was less about the genre. I was lucky enough to work with Sidney Lumet. I work within the confines of Hollywood, and rarely get the opportunity to branch out, and this was one of those opportunities to try something of the European mind.
CS: What does it take for you to trust a director?
VD: That’s a tricky one. I remember 10 years ago I could go direct an independent movie. (in an exuberant voice) "I’ve been auditioning since I was seven years old. I’m tired of auditioning, in fact why should I have to go in an audition if the director’s not showing me how he sets up the lights or if a director isn’t showing me how he moves a camera along a dolly." Any film that you see is never just the director. If it’s a film that you love, it’s not so easy to say, "Oh it’s directed by this person—that means everything that person directs is going be wonderful."
It’s hard to audition a director. Filmmaking is such a collaborative art that can’t look to one person. It’s really all of us coming together for that period to try to make magic.
CS: When you go between action roles, how do you establish a new character from basically the same mold?
VD: The first thing that happens is the cleansing of the former character. I don’t think a lot of actors talk about it, but there is usually a process where you essentially purge yourself of the character played prior to the movie. Then you want to think about what the character represents, and you write down all of the elements about this character and then take the time to find some synchronicity and start breathing the character.
I grew up the son of an acting teacher but I’ve never been really good at articulating what that process is. It was always a bit more internal.
CS: What’s the status of "Hannibal the Conqueror"?
VD: David Franzoni is writing as we speak. I’m very excited about what he’s doing. He’s so zoned in, I think he’s probably doing the second and third ones simultaneously.
I was always fan of the [Ralph] Bakshi films and that medium. In fact I’m directing now an animated "Hannibal" that will serve as a prequel to the film. It’s Hannibal as a boy, so it’s the boy and the elephant. It will be very fun—great, great voices.
