Sunday, February 25, 2007

Movie Review: Children of Men

I watched Children of Men this weekend. From Mexican directior Alfonso Cuarón, Children of Men is a dark tale set in futuristic England. Violence, terrorism, and mayhem are barely contained by a near-police state. Illegal immigrants are kept in cages and tortured. And most troubling of all, women have been infertile for the past 18 years. Not a single baby born on Earth. The delicious Clive Owen is Theo Faron, the story’s hero. Depressed by the state of the world, he seeks solace in booze and in the company of an old friend, an aging hippie hilariously portrayed by Michael Caine.
Theo’s life gets shaken up when his ex-wife, a leader of an underground revolutionary movement, contacts him and asks him for a favor. She wants him to transport a young, female refugee to the coast. The catch? The girl is pregnant.
I won’t give away any more of the plot, but the movie soon turns into a long chase, followed by a visceral urban warfare scene It’s intense, and I wasn’t really expecting an action film. I did like it, though. Some of it reminded me a bit of 28 Days Later, or V for Vendetta (why are these futuristic disaster movies always set in England?) , and some of it is more biblical in allusion, like when Kee reveals her miraculous pregnancy to Theo in a barn.

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