wow

Rating: 9/10 (2 October 2007)

We have entered the era when a five- (or ten-) minute single take action scene can be faked digitally and everyone knows it - which means that the jaw-dropping power of these ones is no longer a matter of 'how did they DO that?' Instead, it's a matter of conceptual force and directorial control: each of these shots embodies the movie's vertiginous ride through a familiar world utterly transformed and rendered in gripping detail. The way it grafts Big Brother resonances onto an immigrant-persecution narrative is very satisfying, even if the politics are then undermined by yet another gang of meet-the-new-boss revolutionaries. Sure they're saddled with the master's tools, but ultimately they look to me like straw men, to be rejected in favour of the miracle-of-childbirth fantasia. When the world's last pregnant woman is rescued from her fogged-in dinghy by a renegade cruiser called 'Tomorrow,' it doesn't just feel like disruptive irony; it feels like, just maybe, Cuaron's political program is to wish the world would go away. But then again, wouldn't you? And anyway these are basically plot issues; the texture in the characterization, the feeling for distant continuities with the present, and the many mysteries barely glanced on the margins (like, exactly how old are those hoodie-urchins who throw stuff at the train?) make this movie a pleasure and a thrill, and how nice to see Michael Caine in such a beautiful little persona-twister as this.