Yesterday I attended an opening day showing of "Babylon AD" at the local theater. I thought the film seemed a little truncated and doing some searches after I got home turns out the scummy 20th Century Fox made the director cut 70 minutes of footage from the film apparently to make it PG-13 and the made 90 minute number for dumbed down Americans. This scuttled the intent of the film which is based on a French novel /Babylon Babies/ by Maurice Georges Dantec. The film was a French Studio Canal production in English starring Vin Diesel, Michelle Yeoh, Melanie Thierry, Gerard Depardieu and Charlotte Rampling. The intent of the movie was to focus on the importance of education of our children but after 20th Century whacked it winds up like a mindless episode of "24." I guess Rupert didn't want the masses to get any such ideas. So if you want to see the Readers Digest version it should be at one of your local theaters. I hope we get a director's cut on BluRay. I'm getting tired of these corporate monsters destroying the arts.
Interview with the director about what happened to the film: http://blogs.amctv.com/scifi-scanner/2008/08/babylon-ad-mathieu-kassovitz.php
