Children Of Men

Children Of Men

Not sure about audiences these days. At a point in Children Of Men, when Theo (the ever more amazing Clive Owen) is scrambling frantically through a full-on assault in the ravaged streets of a refugee camp in Britain, blood spatters the lens of the camera and stays there a while. You are now officially in the movie, running for your life.

“This movie is kind of intense,” the ladies behind me say:

Ya think?

Children Of Men is not only intense, it's must-see like An Inconvenient Truth, though - if you're watching with a slightly more engaged eye than the above ladies - pretty hard to take.

Theo is a disillusioned idealist desk-jockeying in a 2027 fascist Britain, which is apparently the best the world has to offer after total societal collapse and 18-plus years without a live childbirth. A guerilla kidnapping reunites him with freedom fighter and ex-girlfriend Julian (Julianne Moore) and saddles him with the mission of escorting to safety the first pregnant woman in a generation.

In this world of squalid despair, things go from bad to worse - the only light being Theo's friend Jasper (Michael Caine in a standout performance among many) whose reliance on weed, hope and humor barely keeps us afloat.

Director Alfonso Cuaron takes P.D. James's novel into a realm of stuttering, emotionally charged newsbreak realism that is utterly convincing and devastating. The film becomes something of a wartime chase epic that asks you to trade explication for acceptance, a tactic that refreshes adventurous viewers, leaving ample room to stare at urgent humanity awash in grit and horror.

As dystopian fiction advances, the gap in time frames and plausibility continually narrows. Children Of Men is uncomfortably realistic, even chucking in obvious references to Abu Ghraib for those who can't see. Not only is it a superb piece of filmmaking, it's an agit-prop masterpiece that should have sensitive viewers on the streets screaming for justice in our world today.

Children Of Men is a frontrunner for one of the best films of 2007, and launches instantly into the Video Sewer all-time top ten. One hope audiences can rise to the occasion.