Babylon A.D. isn't just any science-fiction film. No, Babylon A.D. is a complete freaking disaster. Something of a bizarre slow-motion train wreck, this is a film that was unceremoniously dumped on the August 29th slush pile that also gave us College, Disaster Movie and (the only watchable film of the lot) Traitor. Days before it was released, director Mathieu Kassovitz released a statement in which he all but completely disowned the film, referring to it as "pure violence and stupidity," claiming (and rightly so) that "parts of the movie are like a bad episode of 24."

Adapted from the French cyberpunk novel Babylon Babies, Kassovitz set out to make a cerebral, seemingly William Gibson-esque actioner that stepped outside the box. Of it he said, "All the action scenes had a goal: They were supposed to be driven by either a metaphysical point of view or experience for the characters." But FOX intervened, apparently quite often, and fought for more straight-forward, by-the-numbers PG-13 action sequences. And whether due directly to their meddling or Kassovitz's frustration and growing distance from the material over the meddling, the action scenes came out just as he described: Lifeless, dull, often yawn inducing. If you didn't know better you'd think they simply slowed down the fights to accommodate an aging action star. But no, Vin Diesel was up to it. The movie simply wasn't.

Look, there's no nice way to say this: The movie is gawdawful. It starts out strong and maintains a decent clip despite the lame action, but keeps its steam from the original dystopian, cyberpunk setting of Central Asia. It's a place and time we've never seen combined on screen before and it is a terrifying and visceral world to walk around in, especially with Vin. But then the third act twist hits and all the mystery melts away as Lambert Wilson (who you'll remember as the Merovingian from the Matrix movies) utters the immortal phrase: "Twenty years ago they drummed me out of the medical profession for trying to infuse artificial intelligence in babies." Then things get dramatically worse as the rest of the plot unfolds. What begins as an interesting, if anemic, cyberpunk film ends in a roller coaster of awfulness unlike anything in recent memory.

Only, it's a roller coaster you won't be going on anytime soon.

You see, when I sat down to immerse myself in the special features of this monstrosity, I found a deleted scene -- a Hummer chase -- and I thought to myself, "They shot two Hummer chases?" No. The movie in the theater ended with an inexplicable and incredibly weak car chase, followed by a sudden major character death, and then a gut-busting scene of Vin playing with two three-year-old children. It was howl-inducing. The movie ended after what appeared to be a completely mindless and random series of scenes slapped together in the hopes of simply having an ending. After all, they shoot horses to put them out of their misery, why not shoot Vin Diesel pictures in the same way?

But that's not what you'll see on DVD. No. For some reason someone, somewhere, thought that maybe all that meddling needed to go away. So the car chase the studio forced Kassovitz to shoot? Gone. The cute Vin shot with the kids? Gone. Not even a special feature. And the character death? There's a new monologue that explains the whole thing and it actually makes sense. Someone tried to make a good movie out of this for the DVD, and actually recut it. So did they save it? No. The film still has a subplot about putting artificial intelligence in babies for one of the most ridiculous reasons you've ever heard. But most of the unintentional, inexplicable comedy is gone.

And if you want to see what went wrong, just turn to the special features. This DVD is a big, subtle apology to Kassovitz and what he went through. There's a making-of detailing how they took a simple transition shot of the characters on snowmobiles and turned it instead into one of the most ludicrous action sequences of the year. There's an interview with the novelist that really shows that the crazier ideas were in fact his -- and illustrates just how hard it might have been to translate them to the screen. There are a few very telling lines scattered throughout by various folks letting you know where Fox specifically forced changes (like the car chase). And there's even a five-minute flash animated short that makes putting artificial intelligence in babies seem a little less ... silly. But only a little.

One nice feature I really liked was a series of commercials that ran in the background of the film -- cool cyberpunk-era commercials filled with lots of little jokes. This part opened with a great warning about how the material wasn't "up to Fox standards, but was compelling enough" to merit inclusion. That made me giggle a little. Okay, I paused it when I fell out of my chair.

But I got to give it to Fox, or at least someone at Fox. They went about trying to make a good movie out of this. And while all the kings' horses and all the kings' men couldn't put Babylon A.D. back together again, they sure tried. And they're offering you a better movie on DVD than I paid $8 to see in a theater. That's something.

Babylon A.D. is available this week from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment.

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