A spirited, powerful and spellbinding movie

Rating: 8/10 (25 January 2008)

The year's 2027 and there hasn't been a birth since 2009, and the death of Baby Diego, a eighteen year old boy, creates a national depression and mourning. In 2027 UK things ain't going too well, immigrants and refugees are held prisoners, being stripped, tortured and held in cages. It's a battle-battered country with terrorism, religions colliding, immigrant invasion and off course, human infertility. Theo (Clive Owen) is a former activist who decides to help his ex-girlfriend Julian with joining the Fishes (dedicated rebels), who fights a war against the military saving and rescuing refugees. Now Theo decides to help a young, black girl named Kee, who reveals that she's eight-months pregnant. This turns everything upside-down as Theo and Kee understands that they've become targets for special interest groups who's willing to kill him and Kee after her baby's born.
Alfonso Cuaron made one of the most passionate thrillers in recent memory with this mind-blowing achievement. It's packed with intellect and spirit, he manages to create character in the long-lost London, a city burning and dying with confusion, depression and lost hope; Theo and Kee knows that there is hope, and Clive Owen's Theo is a shell of lost emotion, emotionless at first - but Owen lets us under Theo's skin in some short, heartbreaking moments. And although the movie is soaked in its long-lost hope and with war raging, there's humanity to find amongst the ruins here - for example Kee's beautiful appearance, Theo's hard-burning soul and off course Michael Caine's brilliant Jasper, a man devoted to his weed, zen music and senile wife, he sticks it to the system and lives in a hidden-away house in the middle of the forest.
The sorrow, beauty and excitement of this movie is unique - one of the finest scenes of 2006 features Theo and the gang being attacked by warriors whilst trying to escape by car, the hand-held camera effect has never worked to a more exhilarating effect, you literally live the scene. CHILDREN OF MEN is spellbinding, a movie that makes you believe and hope when things look as bad as anything, when the fire has stopped burning - there's always something better ahead.