Grit. Power. And human psyche. It's all there.

Rating: 8/10 (7 January 2007)

This one was an truly a pleasant surprise I must admit.
I walked in to the hall vaguely knowing that this was supposed to be a futuristic thriller. I expected to see something on the lines of End-of-the-world-is-coming and there's an average man amongst us who incidentally turns into your run of the mill Rambo/G.I.Joe to, oh well you know, save the world.
I was wrong. By a long shot. This movie seems to be real in so many different ways.
First, the setting - a not so future world of 2027, devastated by nuclear war, where the most essential expression of human existence a.k.a "procreation" ceases to "create" any longer. An unexplained phenomenon of falling sperm count has rendered the human race unable to create any children. What might happen if something of this magnitude is thrust upon us? The movie tries to answer these questions in many dimensions - politics, religion and in all how society reacts to this calamity.
There are so many snippets in the movie that hit you hard about how humans might react. Like the religious zealots who have polarized a section of society to believe god will deliver the human race from this calamity. Like the regular violence by different terrorist groups, pushing their own agenda, that has been imbibed into human lives as an everyday affair. Like war savaged countries not being able to control their populace. How in a world where survival is a miracle, the few who have power live in opulence and the rest equate to less than animals. How democracy turns into a police state in the name of Homeland Security. How refugees are persecuted to keep the "nation" safe. In short, as the chief protagonist in the movie states - "The world went to sh*t".
Theo (Clive Owen in a befitting role) is government employee in the last seemingly functioning government on the planet - The British. A proposition with a rebel group to transport a girl across the border gets Theo involved with a girl who, after a gap of over 18 years in human world, is pregnant. This "miracle baby" is sought out by different groups pushing their own interests. The adventure tells the, very gritty squeamish and hard hitting, tale of their journey. And thankfully, without resorting to too many Hollywood antics.
Special mention must be made of Micheal Caine in the role of the hippie Jasper. He makes those future hippies look good already! The final action sequence is so real that for a minute I was confused if I was seeing real footage of the conflict in Serbia/Bosnia.
It makes you wonder, if there are no more humans being born, wouldn't we work harder to preserve what's left of our species instead of killing each other more vehemently than ever? But then looking around the world, the reflection of reality is that "fear" and "violence" seem to the more powerful forms of human expression. As shown in the final sequence of the movie, even a "miracle" just stops this form of human expression for a little over thirty seconds.
And if a movie makes you wonder about stuff like that. Then, by Jove, it's a pretty darned good movie. It sure is.