Children of Men [Blu-ray]

Hard to believe not many have written a review of this amazing movie since it was released back in 2006/2007. If you have never seen this movie (like me) - please stop whatever you're doing and rent / buy it right now. Seriously. This is one of the best movies that somehow went under the mainstream radar but was critically acclaimed and Oscar nominated for very good reason. This story is about the one thing humans need more than everything else: Hope Even in a nuclear fallout apocalypse, humans still struggle on in hopes of a better future. But what if there was absolutely NO future possible because the human race was going to come to an end within the next 2-3 generations? Losing hope for the future seems to make the best backdrop I've ever seen in a Dystopian Society type movie. It makes it actually believable. Zombies, widespread viruses, nuclear war ... it's all somewhat more of a stretch to our modern minds. Maybe to some critics the idea of all humans suddenly being unable to reproduce isn't that believable by scientific standards. But to me, it was a lot more believable and disturbing than some other "End of the World" type stories. But most of all, this movie delivers a gritty, all-too-real and believable landscape set in a not too futuristic London. The political issues aren't too far removed from some of our own current ones in regards to immigration laws and terrorist activities. It hits close to home, very close. I think that's one of the most disturbing and quieting things about the film. Lastly, director Alfonso Cuaron did an amazing job with the visuals and tone / feel of this movie. It was graphic, yes, but not in an over the top gore kind of way. It was almost too realistic and moving because of how chaotic and destroyed London seems. If the only country in the world still holding together a solid government looks like that, you wonder just how terrifying everything outside really must be. In summary, this dystopia will leave you craving just a little more. You want to be as hopeful as all those refugees and soldiers in the final scenes. Suddenly quieted by the cries of a newborn baby. Sure, critics are pinched there's not enough backstory, and you're left hanging unsure of the future in the end. I think enough movie watchers are sophisticated enough to come to their own unsaid conclusion of what "hope" means in this ending without being hit over the head with a long prologue to spell it out for us. Too many viewers seem to want every tiny detail spoon fed to them. Watch this movie. It's really a keeper.

Children of Men grabs you by the neck and keeps you watching through a harrowing hour and 40 minutes. It's evocative of Orwell's 1984, with a bit of Terry Gilliam's Brazil (sans the humor). Based on the 1992 book by P.D. James, the story takes place in a dystopian 2027 Great Britain in which fertility has vanished from the human race. There are no babies or children, and the youngest person on the planet, age 18, has just been killed. All the major cities in the world except London have been decimated. The streets of London are battle-torn--terrorists, warring factions, the military--and it's barely safe to walk down the street. At the same time, illegal immigrants are being rounded up and put in pens like animals (sound familiar in 2019?). Miraculously, a young woman turns up pregnant, and various political factions want her and her baby. Theo Faron (Clive Owen), a London white collar worker, is contacted by his ex-wife (Julian (Julianne Moore) to help the young woman escape the war-torn country and find safe haven on a ship called Tomorrow. Very little is explained in this film; it's all about the escape. Along the way, we meet Theo's friend Jasper (Michael Caine in a phenomenal performance) and several other characters who assist him (or turn out to be betrayers). The cinematography is astounding, with many long, uninterrupted shots, ala Hitchcock. I'm having a hard time thinking of a movie that has better camera work. You can't avert your eyes. The plot is somewhat elusive, with very little backstory, but director Alfonso Cuaron has wisely chosen to make this a visceral rather than a 'logical' film. He succeeds in captivating us. This is one of the best films of 2006, with a high budget ($76 million), but it lost money because it was not well-promoted. Too far over the average Hollywood-brainwashed moviegoers' heads, I suppose. Quit watching mainstream Hollywood garbage and seek out gems like this one. You will be rewarded.

In many ways, "Children of Men" is a very typical futuristic thriller. It of course extrapolates the current worries of our time into a dystopian nightmare of tomorrow. World ravaged by terrorism, anti-terrorism, and global warming? Check. Shadowy, sem-fascist government? Check. Soulless capitalism relentlessly shilled in ubiquitous advertising? Check. Population stripped of dignity and basic compassion? Check. There is more than one reference to the war in Iraq, which will undoubtedly date this film in just a few years. However, "Children of Men" manages to rise above this genre's cliches in several important ways. First, the most pressing problem is not one specifically related to the troubles of today: the world is dying because for some unknown reason, women can no longer have children. The film opens with the news that the youngest person on earth (18 years old) has died in a brawl. Second, the film is only set about twenty years into the future, so while the there have been some technical advancements, the landscape looks largely the same. It's just different enough to be disquieting. The double decker buses of London are still there. It's just that now, those buses pass billboards that read, "Avoiding Fertility Tests is a Crime." Most importantly, while this film does not break any ground in its genre, what it does, it does well. Other reviewers have complained that the film does not not make a tremendous amount of sense, and this is true. However, the film's main thrust is not a commentary on today's social moores. It is first and foremost a thriller, and we get just enough sense of what's going on to make us care, without getting bogged down in massive expositions on the hows and whys. We are told that the world is in a bad place, and we are drawn in with compelling cinematography, a fast-moving plot, and good acting. I also found some of the final scenes involving Kee, the pregnant woman, quite moving, even more so because the film ends on a decidedly ambivalent note. Early on in the film, the hero says that even if scientists discovered the cure for infertility, it wouldn't help: the world's already gone to pot. And in fact, the movie does not even get that far. It's about saving ONE woman who is pregnant. Whether this will save the world is an open question. The film also does a good job of fleshing Kee out as a person, with an actual personality. I originally passed on this movie because I assumed that she would be treated as a precious, but essentially non-sentient vessel that holds The Antidote to the World's Troubles. While some characters in the film do see her as such, the viewers are allowed to experience her as a unique individual. Final analysis: a very strong example of its genre. Not as imaginative as BladeRunner, not as satiric as Brazil, but 100x better than, say, Running Man. Definitely worth watching.

Children of Men is hands down my favorite film of all time. It's gritty and gorgeous, exciting and action-packed, and has a certain difficult to describe but unmistakable sense of gravity about it. The story itself is without any doubt one of the most romantic ever to appear in the speculative dystopian or speculative apocalyptic film genres. Just so you know where I'm coming from, Blade Runner is my second favorite film of all time, while my favorite science fiction novel is The Sheep Look Up, by John Brunner. Children of Men is on the same level as these works, but in my opinion stands alone. Comparisons are only possible to a certain limited point, because there is nothing else like Children of Men. I feel quite certain that twenty years from now it will be widely regarded as one of the greatest films ever made, and until that time arrives it's going to be obsessively adored in a cult film type of way, much as Blade Runner wasn't particularly well known or appreciated in the early eighties, but is now universally recognized as brilliant. And I'll just add that when I used the word "romantic" up above, I was using it in the original medieval sense of a legend telling of great loyalty in the face of terrifying adversity, with a very modern and sharp-edged chivalric quality to it. There's some true beauty and soaring poetry that one can't help but feel overwhelmed by at certain points during the film. Also, the soundtrack was just extremely effective, with a whole bunch of vibrantly colorful and sort of eccentrically grandiose orchestral-sounding sixties psych songs, along with some classical orchestral music and some cool-sounding cluster headache inducing "zen music". Honestly, this movie just has everything going for it.

First of all, I am a big fan of the genre, since dystopian science fiction is more a comment on our society than an actual projection of what the writer thinks will actually happen. This means, I've sat through a lot of fourth-rate productions and had a good time watching people ekeing out a life in post-nuclear holocaust, post-population explosion, and post apes-taking-over-the-world societies. What I have NOT enjoyed were the big budget dystopian messes like "The Postman" and "Waterworld". Neither of these had the biting sarcasm of, say, "A Boy and His Dog", and tried to cover up the hackneyed ideas with dazzling special effects and scenery. "Children of Men" has both a dark, acerbic soul, and gold standard production values. This movie employs a very plausible impetus for the plot. Women haven't been getting pregnant for nearly one generation, and no one's got a clue how to reverse it. Zoologists are battling the same problem with cheetahs right now, so the premise is not far fetched. Fifty to seventy years from the epoch of the film, the world will have to get along without humans, as it had to get along without dinosaurs some 50 million years earlier. (There is a nice, subtle little illustration at one location which demonstrates that.) Dystopian stories don't work unless there's a nearly impossible-but utterly compelling sign of hope. Winston Smith WILL find true love and save his colleagues from Big Brother before it's too late. Det. Robert Thorn will be able to stop corporate America from feeding people their deceased loved ones in the form of little green crackers. And so, it is no spoiler to say that "Children of Men" has a gal with a bun in the oven: the commodity that makes all other commodities possible. I mean, without this, there won't be anyone around to battle chagrined androids, or drive a truck full of gasoline across the Australian outback in the 23rd Century. I can't think of a stronger plot motivation in any story. The backdrop of "Children of Men" is layered with commentary on immigration policies, celebrity worship, religion, and the self-destructive nature of our species. Particularly striking to me is, even as human life is becoming a scarce resource, people in this film from every political stripe are still willing to kill their fellows by the truckload to further their particular causes. And they ALWAYS have a great justification for it. (I don't think I've ever wanted to punch out so many movie extras in my entire life.) The climax of "Children of Men" is very powerful. It makes the whole movie, even if the denouement ain't the greatest. The actors were superb. They created such believable characters who were hanging on to the tiniest shred of hope, and defiantly confronting the end of humankind with a sense of duty and a sense of humor. This was clearly a project the actors believed in, seeing as how two of the biggest stars don't make it halfway through the story. Lastly, I applaud the use of a single, hand-held camera and very long shots. It gave the audience the feeling of being part of the team trying to save the pregnant girl, instead of viewers of some CGI masterpiece, where there was neither wobble nor splatter on the lens to distract us from Spiderman's antics. The extra features in this movie are good...I guess. I don't particularly like to hear commentary, because there's a chance it could be way out of line with how I saw the themes. There are some good anecdotes about having to solve logistical problems, but I couldn't say whether there should be more or less of that sort of thing. This is definitely a movie you should buy, so you can watch it again, and lend it to your cynical friends.

This is one of the greatest films of all time. The directing and cinematography are perfect, the writing and acting are perfect, and the story and its allegory are perfect. The entire movie is in fact an allegory This movie came out in 2007, 17 years ago, and the story is still just as relevant today. Cuaron is a genius along with his other Spanish peers like Denis Villeneuve, del Toro, Inarritu, etc. Cannot recommend you watch this enough...

Children of Men is one of my favorite movies. It's powerful, dark, heavy, distressing, artistic, scary and real. The dystopian setting is completely believable since there is so much in the movie that can be tied to now, in history as it unfolds. The way foreigners are treated, how the government doesn't care, how the world falls into chaos when unity isn't the main focus. I love how heavily focused on art the movie is, with easter eggs of pieces, like the Birth of Venus, the Pieta or the Guernica, a small reminder that art is everywhere and is the center of who we are as people. The last half hour of the movie it filmed beautifully and puts you right in the center of the action. You feel the fear, the despair, the desperate need Theo has to get to Kee, and the moment the war pauses for just a moment is such a breathtaking scene. It's a movie that just knocks me off my feet every single time I watch it.

Based on a book by PD James, this film is moving and brilliant. I absolutely recommend this film if you’re wanting something deep, gritty, and dramatic.