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An entry in the hard-boiled-guy-transports-special-girl genre, Babylon A.D. isn’t as profound as Children of Men or as much fun as Serenity — still, Vin Diesel’s bad-ass boomfest will do if you’re in the mood for post-environmental-apocalypse action that doesn’t make you think too hard. Mercenary Toorop (Diesel) is hired by a Russian mafioso (Gérard Depardieu with a comically redundant fake nose) to take nubile Aurora (Mélanie Thierry) and her minder, Sister Rebeka (Michelle Yeoh), from an Asian convent to New York. As the three trek to America across the Bering Strait, Toorop learns why various thugs, some working for a disgraced scientist (Lambert Wilson), some for a high priestess (Charlotte Rampling), are trying to snatch the kind-hearted girl. And he begins to care. Mathieu Kassovitz, adapting a novel by Maurice Dantec, fails to create a coherent world, and he makes an infuriating number of edits in Yeoh’s fight scenes. What’s left is Diesel’s somewhat amusing pumped-up Bogart. 90 minutes | Boston College + Fenway + Fresh Pond + Chestnut Hill + Suburbs
