Babylon A.D.

It's a hard world out there for Vin Diesel. My boy gets no respect. His rise and fall must've been one of the fastest in the history of pop culture. He got knocked down as quickly as the moving going public propped him up. He's not entirely blameless, of course, since he made a couple of poor choices along the way, but still... no respect.

Vin Diesel is one of those actors about whom it is just taken as a given that he sucks, that he makes crap, and that nobody likes him. Of course, most of the people who say that have never seen a Vin Diesel movie, they just saw the trailer for xXx. Now, I'm not going to defend xXx because it was a pretty dumb movie (but I enjoyed it), nor am I going to mock people for judging that trailer without seeing the movie, since it was wholly representative of the actual movie. What does annoy me is when people see a trailer like than and then assume that Vin Diesel sucks. Why can't people just say, "Vin Diesel makes movies that don't interest me"?

Vin Diesel has worked with Sydney Lumet and Steven Spielberg. What directors have you worked with?

And it's just as hard out there for a Vin Diesel fan, of which I am most definitely one and will remain so until the day I die. Unless he keeps making movies like this one, that is. It wasn't that good.

 If you've seen one post-apocalyptic film about a grizzled loner who is forced to take on a job against his will until he has a personal epiphany and learns to put the good of mankind over his own selfishness, you've seen them all. Seriously, how many times do they have to make this movie? There's a reason why post-apocalyptic movies never make money: because they are all the same and they are never very good. This film almost stands out if only because the visual design and look of the film is so well done -- and because Vin Diesel is a really good, charming, likable actor -- but at the end of the day it's just boring and cliche.

I don't blame Vin Diesel for signing on, since he probably wanted to work with people like Gerard Depardieu and Michelle Yeoh, but I can't imagine that the script was all that great. A lot of the user comments and reviews online talk about how the studio recut the film and spoiled the director's original vision, but I couldn't see anyway this mess of a film could've been any better and more original. The story was boring and the action sequences were uninspired. I can't even recommend this film for fans of Vin Diesel, even though he was perfectly cast as a former merc who's completely believable as somebody who would kill and slaughter a wild animal, only to bring it back and eat it with a nice glass of merlot.