Wildly Conflicted Premise

Rating: 3/10 (14 May 2007)

From a 'cinematic' standpoint, this is an extremely well-crafted movie. It's very intense, and it has some very heart-wrenching moments (the Michael Caine character's last scene, for example). But after ninety or so minutes of torturing the audience, the movie just ends. And after very effectively promoting for that ninety or so minutes the idea that the human race is just a brutal mob, why am I supposed to care that women have stopped having babies? Unfortunately, this movie is ultimately just a macho fantasy, even to the title: "Children of MEN(?)". Babies are beautiful, no doubt about that, but in our actual real world where every single problem the planet faces today - social, political, environmental - can be traced directly to overpopulation, do we really need a movie whose subliminal message is "a baby will fix everything"?