Children of Men - A Movie Review by Andrew Lawrence

"As the sound of the playgrounds faded, the despair set in. Very odd, what happens in a world without children's voices."

Children of Men is a science fiction movie set in a near future where all women in the world have become infertile, and as a result, no babies are being born any longer. In the beginning of the movie, the youngest person in the world is killed at 18-years-old, so it's been almost twenty years since the last child was born when our story begins. Panic and despair has spread across the globe, and almost all major cities and governments have been brought to ruin, leaving the world in a state of chaos. England is the only country that hasn't completely fallen apart, mainly because the government has an extremely aggressive and radical way of dealing with the mass immigration that the country is experiencing. At every train station, airport and ferry dock, armed-to-the-teeth soldiers pick up anyone without a British passport, and send them to a camp that practically works the same way as a modern day concentration camp. 

Theo Faron, played by Clive Owen, lives a lonely and depressing life, until a certain someone from his past one day comes along, and asks him to help her do something that essentially could rescue the world from it's steep decline into pandemonium. Theo is a lonely office worker who lost his sense of purpose when his his son died at eight years old, and he used to be a political activist who fought against the violent and radical British immigration system. However, since his wife left him after the the death of their child, he's lost his sense of meaning in life, as well as his motivation to try and change the ways of the government. A turn of inevitable events eventually force him to return to business, and thus we have our movie. 

Right from the beginning, Children of Men is an extremely dark and chillingly atmospheric movie that does a really great job of creating a depressive mood of despair and catastrophe. The streets of London are grey and littered with trash, and living there is a constant struggle against crime, fear of terrorist attacks, hunger and sickness, and the griddyness is completely believable because of the realistic set design. The beautiful camera work is also worth noting, and especially some of the longer scenes are incredibly well filmed in my opinion. There's just something about long, unedited and uncut takes that is just incredibly fascinating to me, and Children of Men have several of those. The editing and phasing of the movie is top notch as well, and as a result, this movie manages to tell what could have easily been a three hour story, in almost fifteen minutes less that two hours. There were a few times when the CG could have been a fair deal better, but it's not very noticeable, especially if your not one of those people who pays a lot of notice to detail. To sum it up: almost all of the technical aspects of this movie are extremely well done, but they are not what you'll be thinking about the most after you've finished watching it. 

In my opinion, the level of emotional engagement i felt towards the main characters and the task they set out on, is Children of Men's strongest selling point. There were so many times throughout this movie where i found myself left breathless by the raw, emotional and tragic things that occur, and the speed at witch I became attached to most of the main cast is something I've rarely experienced before. Juliane Moore is terrific in this movie, and Clive Owen's character has a lot of emotional connection to Moore's, something that's very well depicted in a very short amount of time, and it's a very vital element in Theo's character progression. Owen's portrayal of Theo is probably the best performance of this movie also, so having his progression as a character be as important as it is makes perfect sense. He plays the "Average Joe gone heroic and sacrificial hero"-type flawlessly, and his powerful screen presence is hard to ignore. 

Charlie Hunnam and Chiwetel Ejiofer are both great at portraying political activists/terrorists, and Michael Caine is just being Michael Caine; utterly fantastic. I liked Pam Ferris and Clare-Hope Ashitey much less though. Ashitey's acting was just kinda horrible at times, and it was a little too visible that her character weren't originally in the book that the movie is based upon. In the book, her character and Julian Moore's is the same person, and I'd have liked it better if this was the case in the movie as well. I do however see why they decided to split them up, and as a whole, the writers probably did the right thing by splitting the role in two. Ferris' character was just plain annoying, dispensable, stupid and unlikeable. All in all though, I'd say that the cast does an all round good job, Clive Owen, Juliane Moore and Michael Caine especially. 

The world in which Children of Men takes place is another thing I liked tremendously about it. Post apocalyptic movies have always fascinated me, and out of the many movies in this franchise that I'we seen, I feel like this one creates one of the more realistic and well though out illusions of how things would be in such a situation. In one of the opening scenes, the one where Theo is buying coffee just before the beginning credits, I was really impressed with how well the director and the camera crew captured the essence of what a society on the brink of downfall would be like to live in, and the fact that the climax of a scene so early in the movie is as memorable as this one is, is extremely impressive.

Children of Men is a great movie in my opinion, and it's a film that the wast majority of people will be able to watch and enjoy. The characters are great, the technical work that went into the movie is top notch, and there's not a single scene in which I found myself bored or in lack of entertainment. It's an emotionally engaging picture with lots of heartbreaking, realistic tragedy and nail bitingly intense moments that will make your heart pound, and as a whole I've got very few bad things to say about it. It's relatively short and to the point, which makes it easier to watch than a lot of other sci-fi dramas, although I would have liked to see a bit more of the political stuff that would be going on behind the scenes in a world like this, but then again, it might have dragged on a bit too long if this had been the case. I feel like this is one of those movies that you can just watch over and over again and never get tired of seeing, and as such, Children of Men is very much worth buying in BluRay. (5/6)

Children of Men IMDb page here

Children of Men trailer here