KEY POINTS:
On the big screen, Vin Diesel has played his share of badass bruisers but offscreen he'd rather talk about Shakespeare or US foreign policy than brag about his cinema body count.
It's no surprise, then, that the 41-year-old Diesel is about the only one who doesn't look upon
his latest film, Babylon A. D., as a return to his shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later roots.
The actor says he was drawn to the futuristic action film for its European flavour rather than the chance to deliver more blood and thunder.
"I was lucky enough to work with Sidney Lumet on Find Me Guilty but you rarely get the opportunity to branch out. Babylon A. D. was one of those opportunities. I wanted to try something that had more of a European feel to it. It's an aspect of the movie which felt unique," he says.
Directed by French film-maker Matthieu Kassovitz (La Haine), it's a race-against-time thriller about a hardened warrior named Toorop (Diesel) who is assigned to escort Aurora (Melanie Thierry) and her guardian Sister Rebeka (Michelle Yeoh) on a 9600km journey from Eastern Europe to New York.
Aurora isn't exactly the innocent creature she initially seems to be. Fluent in 19 languages and capable of manning an ancient submarine, the young woman is the perfect combination of human and machine.
"I liked that Toorop is a sceptic, a cynic, not trusting of anyone," says Diesel. "I feel like there's a part of that in all of us. To exercise that in a character felt exciting for me."
The movie offers a grim vision of the future. Nuclear mishaps have made large areas of the planet uninhabitable and wars are raging.
Diesel shudders to think that Babylon A. D. might be a snapshot of what the world will look like in a couple dozen years. "The whole film is basically about the difficulty of transporting somebody across a border and I think ... we're coming into an age when borders will be strong.
"And I think that our society, for the most part, will be numb to it and won't recognise what is happening because we have our freedom in the virtual world and our freedom on the internet. So subconsciously, on some level, we're satisfied with the kinds of freedom we have. I think it's a bait and switch."
Coming up for Diesel are some long-
anticipated projects. Next year he will reprise his role as Dominic Toretto in the fourth instalment of The Fast and the Furious franchise (the original screens tomorrow on TV3 at 8.30pm). He skipped the second movie and made a cameo in the third but is excited about the latest entry, which is a prequel to The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.
"This is the true sequel to the first one because we've got all of the original actors back. We've got Jordanna Brewster, Michelle Rodriguez, Paul Walker."
Diesel hopes next year will also bring the third film in The Chronicles of Riddick trilogy. "David Twohy is writing Dark Athena as we speak. The video game is continuing full force. It's fun ... and I'm very excited about what David is doing."
And what of Hannibal, Diesel's long-planned dream project about the Carthaginian general who rode an elephant across the Alps to attack Rome in third century BC. ?
"Hannibal, you beast," says Diesel with a laugh. "It's my Moby Dick. I'm directing an animated Hannibal that will act as a prequel. It's about Hannibal as a boy. So it's a look at a boy and his elephant. It'll be very fun."
One of the reasons Diesel is jazzed about animation is that he's looking forward to the day when he can show the cartoon to his 6-month-old daughter. Diesel is also not ruling out a sequel to comedy The Pacifier.
"That's how the whole damn baby thing started," he says. "I worked with those babies for too long and I said, 'It's time'. So who knows?"
* Babylon A. D. is out now in cinemas. The Fast & The Furious plays on TV3 tomorrow at 8.30pm.