"Pull my finger." The world in in a lot of trouble. The youngest man in the world, Baby Diego, 19, has just been killed in a bar fight, and the world is mourning. The world's women have been infertile for nearly 20 years, and no new children have been born. Society has all but collapsed around the world - chaos, anarchy, destruction, but England is still holding on, barely - through restrictive immigration controls (holding 'fugees in cells in the streets, sending them to detention camps..) and what essentially amounts to a police state. Terrorism is common, and people have all but lost hope. Theo Faron (Clive Owen) is surviving, day by day, mainly to visit his friend Jasper (Michael Caine). One day, however, Theo's ex-wife, Julian (Julianne Moore), leader of The Fishes, a terrorist organisation, kidnaps him and asks for his help to smuggle a girl out of the city. As Theo discovers, this girl is pregnant. "Children of Men" represents its failed and oppressive future spectacularly well, has some very intense scenes, including some rather spectacular camera work, and is paced somewhat briskly, especially after the first third. They've essentially taken everything about the source novel that made it good, and run with it, while adapting facets of it to better suit the medium. It might even be arguable that the movie is superior to the novel in some respects - a pretty big call from someone like me who's normally quite a purist for movie adaptations of written works.

[Back to Collector Times]

[Prev.]

[Return to Reviews]

[Disclaimer]

[Next]

Copyright © 2007 Christopher Coleman About the Author