You know those movies that you rent/watch atleast once a year because you just love them so much? You already know what happens, you can quote lines, but everytime you watch it, you discover something new that makes you love it even more?
For me, one of those movies is Children of Men, with Clive Owen and Julianne Moore. I watched it again about a week ago and was blown away, more so than ever before, by how well the film is shot. I definitely wanted to encourage my friends and fans to check it out if you haven't already so I asked
a movie critic friend of mine, Pete Spedale, to dive a little deeper into the film and do a more professional review. He did.
I've included the review below. Make sure to check out the below link to Pete Spedale's reviews on Rotten Tomatoes! He does a great job of reviewing new movies that you can see in theaters.
Thanks Pete!
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/user/744271/reviews/?id=326459204&fb_source=message#reviews_main
Dystopian futures have been a staple in the movies since Metropolis in 1927. They can range from cutting edge (The Matrix) to ridiculous (Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure). One thing all of them should have in common: they should immerse the audience into the new world they have created. This world is the driving force of Children of Men, a unique take on the future of mankind. Writer/Director Alfonso Curaon crafts a wonderful tale of despair, mystery, heroism, and suspense as Children of Men pushes its hero, Theo (Clive Owen) further into the desolation of a dying Britain.
A great tragedy has befallen humanity in 2027. The youngest person in the world has just died. He was 18 years old, because humanity has become infertile starting in 2009 (for reasons unknown). Right after the death, Theo unexpectedly gets a call from his ex-wife Julian (Julianne Moore), who is active in a group of rebels fighting the British government. She asks him to escort a group out of Britain to a society called the Human Project. The group includes Julian, Luke (Chiwetel Ejiofor), the leader of the insurrection, Miriam (Pam Ferris), a voodoo worshipper, and Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey). The reason for the aid of Theo and secrecy is a whopper: Kee is pregnant. Theo must navigate through multiple treacheries including betrayal, power grabs, and lots of weapons.
From its first scene, Curaon tells you there is something a little off about our current setting. His dying society bears an uncanny resemblance to a war torn Europe post-WW II. The color scheme is destaturated to paint the world in bleak grays. For every LCD billboard there are 10 poor homeless people staring at them. The uniqueness of showcasing a future society as one the audience has seen in the past makes it easier for the audience to understand 2027 Britain as well as provide a terrifying paradox of a future society than cannot advance. This hauting image of a poverty-stricken, urgent, dying society is elevated using a hand-held camera with long unbroken takes. By experiencing the world with the characters instead of above them, Curaon transplants humanizes this lovelorn place and allows the audience to personally feel the character's pain.
If only Curaon's script could match his setting. Overall, the script is very strong and emotionally competent. There is a violent unexpected attack in the first 5 minutes of the picture, which sets the script up for lots of twists and turns as the story goes along. There are two inherent problems for the story though: The Human Project is a macguffin (for those who don't know, a macguffin is a Hitchcock term describing a plot element providing motivation for a character's actions that is not explained to the audience), and the direction of the story is the path of least resistance. What this means is that the story does not bother explaining the epidemic of infertility or how a new baby will survive in the current setting. Instead, the script focuses on the consequences of the baby ending up with the rebellion or the government. Despite the macguffin, Children of Men's script does a great job of showing character depth and progression while providing some really suspenseful chase sequences and unexpected acts of heroism along the way.
The acting ranges from solid to great. Clive Owen is very good as Theo. The script gives him a haunted past, which he uses to push himself into perpetually more dangerous scenarios. Chiwetel Ejiofor showcases impressive complexity for a character that could have had one note to his personality. Pam Ferris and Clare-Hope Ashitey (in her 2nd role) provide spunk and determination to the story, and Michael Caine (as Theo's hippie friend) and Julianne Moore are always great. The one failing is that the government and rebellion are essentially faceless entities, making their causes unimportant to the central characters.
Children of Men is one of those rare instances where at the end we wish there was more time to explore the consequences of the story. It leaves you with plenty of questions about the fragility of humanity and the unsteady equilibrium of peace the world revolves around. Children of Men could make for a great TV miniseries; until that day, Alfonso Curaon's adaptation of P.D. James's novel is a cautionary tale about the value of human life that won't leave your thoughts very easily.
