Almost Perfect

Rating: 9/10 (13 January 2007)

A lot of people thought that getting the job of directing the third Harry Potter movie would be Alfonso Cuarón's big break. Yet oddly enough, this Mexican director's big break would not only come years later, it would also be one he made for himself. Children of Men is that big break.
This movie is, without a doubt, n of the most "in your ace films" you will see all year. Cuarón made a decision about how he was going to present this film and did not look back. The environments are dirty and decaying, the people are all overshadowed by the hopelessness of their situation, and the only remaining signs of government we see are of the "mighty" English.
Clive Owen plays a man who has given into this life and world and has ceased to care. He lives his life as though the events that unfold around him don't matter unless they directly affect them. Owen gives a great performance as the man who has given up to avoid pain, but is cast right back into life with the revelation that a young woman is pregnant.
From there, Children takes off with the care and percussion of a director far more experienced then one would expect Cuarón to be. The action sequences in this film are amazing on their own, but become even better with the realization that a lot of them are done in long shots that go an ungodly amount of time without cutting. This film also contains (near its end) what may be the greatest urban combat sequence ever caught on film.
However, for everything that is great about this film, there are also a lot of things wrong with it. For one, Cuarón takes a great deal of care to make things very real to the viewers. While not a bad thing in and of it self, it makes it annoying when he cuts out of a situation that is a major problem (a major medical operation that is handled in only a very few minutes and left unresolved by a cut to when it's all over) or has some implausible action scenes (the car rolling down the hill that the men on foot would have caught). Also, one too many sequences in this film are played for laughs. Cain's performance does not fall into the category, but chasing the car down the hill does. And finally, and this is really the big one, the movie is so sad and so depressing that by the end, you have either left or have made yourself indifferent to the death and violence as a way of coping. This films last few scenes display the problem as Cuarón tries for an emotional ending that I could not latch onto because of how damaged I already was.
Despite its flaws, this really is one of the best films of the year.