Good story, Not enough for a whole film

A Masterpiece!

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

The Soul Hunter plot to this movie was excellent. That brothel sub plot was a little funny, but totally unnecessary. Martin Sheen gives an excellent performance. I also like how they make good use of Garabaldi. The special effects were great as usual. This an okay entry to the B5 story.

I wonder whether Ian McShane's long-running role as antiques dealer Lovejoy on BBC TV influenced in any way his casting here. You'd think he'd be a bit more comfortable in the role, anyway.However, the one role that always seems to get overlooked is Richard Biggs' near-cameo as Dr. Stephen Franklin - or at least someone who looks like him. Speaking in a bizarre "Kobayashi-from-The-Usual-Suspects" accent, and with a completely different set of mannerisms, you feel the hair on the back of your neck rise as you realise this isn't the Dr. Franklin we all know and love.For me, that is the most memorable scene of this film, it beats Tracy Scoggins in lingerie anytime. This IS the Internet, remember - it's possible to see her with a lot less on!

Usually, JMS and his crew do a great job. There is no argument that Babylon 5 may have been the finest science fiction series ever to come to television. In this entry in the long series of good films, however, things become a little more slack, and the result is an uninvolving, mildly amusing detour. A Dumb subplot involving the fight with a virtual brothel does nothing to help this film; it is, in a sense, weighted down by the inability of the producers to add anything new into the Babylon 5 universe. Instead of generating a strong storyline, the creators have opted for a plot about a lost "river" of souls and the claimant who arrives unexpectedly to collect his stolen property. Martin Sheen as the alien "soul hunter" is one of the most ludicrous examples of miscasting since Tom Selleck as King Ferdinand in Christopher Columbus: The Discovery.

I thought "The River of Souls" was a very good Babylon 5 movie, with some exceptional performances from Martin Sheen, Tracy Scoggins and Ian MacShane. If this were an episode of the series (without the humour) it would probably be one of my favourite stand-alone stories of the series.Personally, I've always preferred Scoggins to Christian, although granted JMS didn't write her as well for much of the series and she did have to endure the Byron/Telepath plot. If you take out the smutty humour about the brothel and the "poorer" actors in those scenes, then this movie is solid stuff. Probably my third favourite of the four movies, but in no means bad at all.