We sat down recently with Vin Diesel to talk about his newest film, Babylon A.D., a story set in the future in which Deisel plays Toorop, a veteran-turned-mercenary who accepts the high-risk job of escorting a woman from Russia to China. Vin discusses what initially attracted him to the project, how the story relates to current events and what makes a great stunt team.

Q: So Vin, what brought you to the project?
 
A: You know I wasn’t really familiar with Maurice Dantec’s book prior to the movie so I can’t say “oh, as a book I loved it.”  It was really an opportunity to do a film that lived somewhat in the action world which was a comfort zone but branched off in the sense that it was in a Fred Sartaris perspective and I think that is what made this such an interesting project for me to be involved in and I think that ultimately sets it apart from the other films.  You know as somebody in the film business whether you’re an actor or whether you’re a director you ultimately want your filmography to be substantial and sometimes you do films that you want to include into your filmography. And in a way, I had just come off working with Sidney Lamet I was very excited about trying films with different types of filmmakers and this was an opportunity to do a film with a European sensibility that I thought made it a cool opportunity.

Q: The film presents a dystopian future, but we’re watching right now in 2008. Did you think about the film in the context of the current state of affairs as you were filming it?

A: It’s interesting because what was happening in current events at the time was influencing, if you can believe this, the backstory.  No one really imagines how much of the backstory you really have to create in order to realize the fully-fledged character, because every character has his past and his past is generally what’s influencing who he is.  And at the time I was working on the film, US soldiers were being sent back to Camp Pendleton to be charged or tried for killing civilians in Iraq.  Toorop's backstory, as I understood it, was that he was drafted as a teenager, sent overseas to the front lines and lost a friend. And when he lost his friend he went berserk, went crazy and then was called on his actions.  He did not want to be there in the first place and then he is summoned back to America to be charged and decides not to go back.  Now he lives under the protection of these Russian mercenaries.

Q: And so now he’s got this huge job, which involves snowmobiles and submarines -

A: Yeah, there is a lot going on.  It’s an opportunity now to come home, and I think a lot of this movie is about coming home.  What’s crazy is that now you know we’ve got real border issues in Russia and Georgia that are taking the spotlight. It’s interesting that we made this movie about those Russian borders and now, as of a couple weeks ago, it’s become front page news.

Q: What was it like working with this team of stunt coordinators? Did everyone involved in this movie have another idea about a better way to do the stunts and to take the action to another level?

A: Totally. We had a great stunt team. We used a guy named Alain who worked on the Bourne series who really, really brought that mercenary fighting style which was less of a polished athletic fighting style and more of a kind of resourceful fighting style.  We had a second unit director, Bob Brown, who was incredible. And then, of course, we had real mixed martial artists like Jerome Le Banner who brought the kind of realism that you see in those scenes.  And then we had the sledge necks who were a huge find. These guys turned snowmobile stunts into a real sport and they have millions of followers. We got them to come out to Sweden and they were incredible and they taught me how to do these amazing jumps. It was great.