Children Of Men

In an age where just about every film runs a bloated 2 to 3 hours it is refreshing to find a movie that keeps things simple and tells a pretty epic story in just an hour and a half. This is Children of Men, the most recent effort by Alfonso Cuaron, the prolific Mexican director that has worked on everything from Great Expectations to Harry Potter passing through Little Princess and Y Tú Mama También. As with his other movies he does a good job of balancing tragedy, humor, and sex with his amazing location choices and smart soundtracks ripped straight from his I-Pod.

Children of Men opens in a dystopian world where not a single person has been born in the past 18 years. While the cause for this ecological catastrophe can’t be accurately pinned down, the results are clear. Humanity has been thrown into a nihilistic downward spiral and only England seems to have been able to successfully keep the peace (through a little tough love of course). Refugees from toppled governments flood to England looking for a chance to live a better life, being turned away by a militarized immigration department.

Clive Owen plays an ex-activist who now works for the government. His life is thrown into turmoil when he is tapped by his revolutionary ex-wife played by Julianne Moore to take advantage of his political connections. You see, the gang of dissidents that her character belongs to have gotten their hands on a world-saving miracle in the form of Kee (Claire-Hope Ashitey); a young woman who has somehow found a way to get herself pregnant when the rest of humanity has failed. The remainder of the film is a fast-paced race against time to transport this woman to a sanctuary where she will be beyond the reach the people who would seek to exploit her as a political tool.

The end result is both bleak and humorous as humans cope with their extinction through whatever means necessary. And through all the darkness and nihilism Kee shines as a single ray of hope, which is in fact quite moving. The dialog is fun, with lots of jokes, poignant speeches and some of the most rapid fire expeditionary dialog I have ever encountered. A lot of the juiciest bits come from Michael Caine, the hardest working old dude in Hollywood.

Oh, before I forget, it has been billed as an action movie. While said action sequences are few and far between, most of them will leave you breathless. They are carefully choreographed chaos, with dozens of extras running around, bullets kicking up dust everywhere and explosions that look ripped from news feeds instead of Hollywood movies. These scenes are filmed in guerilla documentary style with no cuts or flashy effects so the danger is always present and real. Also this films short running time is a nice invitation to re-watch the film, which I will gladly do sometime soon.