He told AMCTV that he didn't have a very good time making the Vin Diesel sci-fi thriller.
"I never had a chance to do one scene the way it was written or the way I wanted it to be. The script wasn't respected. Bad producers, bad partners, it was a terrible experience."
Adding he got involved in the project because he thought:
"The scope of the original book (Babylon Babies by Maurice Georges Dantec) was quite amazing. The author was very much into geopolitics and how the world is going to evolve. He saw that as wars evolve, it won't be just about territories any more, but money-driven politics. As a director it's something that's very attractive to do."
None of that political subtext shows up in the final film - "It's pure violence and stupidity. 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... instead parts of the movie are like a bad episode of 24."
Kassovitz says it's all distributor Fox is fault the film sucks:
"Fox was sending lawyers who were only looking at all the commas and the dots. They made everything difficult from A to Z."
The re-editing of the film by the studio to bring it down to 93 minutes forced him to speak up and out against the movie...
"I should have chosen a studio that has guts. Fox was just trying to get a PG-13 movie. I'm ready to go to war against them, but I can't because they don't give a s--t."
Not having read the book nor seen the finished product I can't comment on the structure or narrative but PG-13 is a major studio's favorite rating-That much is certain....Look at what happened with Kick-Ass Risk taking seems to have gone out of style in Hollywood.
It's pretty bad when a director bad mouth's his own flick---There's always a Director's Cut DVD If the studio forgives Kassovitz for putting the blame on them...
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