Children of Men

Starring: Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Michael Caine, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Charlie Hunnam Directed by: Alfonso Cuarón Runtime: 109 min. Rated: R Release date: December 25, 2006 - More Info
READER RATINGS:
7.7 OVERALL	Smart . . . . . . . . 9.1 Sexy . . . . . . . . . 7 Funny . . . . . . . . 6.5

The Nerve Review

Set in 2027, Alfonso Cuarón's dystopian button-pusher Children of Men, adapted from a novel by P.D. James, posits a world in which women have mysteriously gone barren, so that the youngest human beings on the planet are now in their late teens. It is a world without hope, without vitality, without a future — and also, presumably, without anyone to man the cash registers at Taco Bell and the Gap. But so intent are Cuarón and his phalanx of screenwriters (five are credited) upon making glib visual reference to current events that they toss all logic aside, clumsily superimposing their own concerns onto James' blatant Christian allegory. And so we get nightmarish images of illegal aliens herded into cages, even though a moment's thought suggests that immigration would be the least of a depopulated society's worries. In this fashionable context, global infertility functions strictly as a plot device — a means of pushing various ill-defined characters through a bevy of contemporary sociopolitical bugaboos.

What's wowing some critics, in addition to the film's superficial topicality, is the specific way that Cuarón and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (The New World) choreograph the journey of former radical Theo (Clive Owen) as he shepherds a miraculously pregnant young woman (Claire-Hope Ashitey) toward the U.K. border, where she'll be collected (they hope) by a group of rogue scientists known as the Human Project. Lubezki shot The Birdcage ten years ago, and if you remember that film's "impossible" opening, which takes the viewer across the ocean by helicopter and then all the way behind the curtains of a nightclub stage in what appears to be a single unbroken shot, you'll be prepared for the empty virtuosity of Children of Men, which makes a fetish of traveling hither and yon — inside and outside of fast-moving vehicles during a chase scene; through the nonstop gunfire of a battle zone — without a visible cut, often for eight or ten hair-raising minutes at a stretch. It's all very impressive, but is technical wizardry really what we want from a movie about the potential death of mankind? — Mike D'Angelo

Other Reviews

LA Times
Kenneth Turan
"The best science fiction talks about the future to talk about the now, and Children of Men very much belongs in that class. Made with palpable energy, intensity and excitement, it compellingly creates a world gone mad that is uncomfortably close to the one we live in."
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The Onion AV Club
Keith Phipps
"A film of astonishing immediacy... a heartbreaking, bullet-strewn valentine to what keeps us human."
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The New York Times
Manohla Dargis
"Lifts you to the rafters, transporting you with the greatness of its filmmaking."
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LA Weekly
Scott Foundas
"One of the year’s most imaginative and uniquely exciting pieces of cinema. A brilliant genre entertainment that channels the spirit of a 1960s protest picture; a political thriller in which the politics are never permitted to overwhelm the narrative; and a human drama that is about nothing less than the survival of the species."
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The Village Voice
J. Hoberman
"Shockingly immediate... functions equally well as fantasy and thriller."
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Your Reviews

i wish i had liked this movie more. i love science fiction and clive owen and everyone seems to think it's a perfect film, but i didn't see that. the characters were a bit thin, i couldn't understand their motivation a lot of the time, the ending was a little dissatisfying and i just didn't get that drawn in. i'm going to see it again, though, to give it another chance. there were lots of excellent things about it, but it didn't blow me away.