Incredibly well-made and important futuristic action drama

Rating: 10/10 (8 November 2008)

London, 2027. The world society has collapsed into widespread chaos, and as the news reports in England loudly proclaim, "Only Britain soldiers on!" Needless to say, the British have sealed their borders and have begun forcefully exporting illegal immigrants and, for nearly two decades, no one on earth has been able to conceive a child. There is global grief expressed when a teenager, the youngest boy in the world, is killed in a fight in South America.
On a purely aesthetic level, I love that futuristic London looks almost the same as it looks now, which will certainly be the case when 2027 finally does roll around, with the exception that in the movie it is a frightening police state. There are no flying cars or bizarre outfits, just normal people going about their lives in a decaying society. The most futuristic things in the movie are the video billboard (which are here now, by the way) and the crazy looking iMacs that people are using.
The movie is basically about the approaching end of mankind, the gradual disintegration of modern humanity as we know it. There are a lot of clever political jabs inserted into the plot, such as some ham-handed ones like a bunch of anti-Bush stickers on the wall of a key character's apartment, but also more clever ones, like the revelation that suicide kits are made available to the public but marijuana remains illegal.
There is global fear about the inability for anyone to conceive a child, and it provides a much more immediate threat of the end of mankind than the gradual decay of civilization. If no one can procreate, the human race is sure to die out. This is an even faster and more effective method of killing off the entire human population than the deadliest plague or virus, both of which always leave survivors. The strength of the human race is founded on our diversity, but if we can't reproduce we are certainly lost.
When an African woman turns up pregnant, the government wants her and there is a frantic race to gain custody of her, complicated by massive political turmoil. Clive Owen and Julianne Moore play Theo and Julian, respectively, ex-spouses who team up to protect the miraculously pregnant woman and deliver her to a location that is safe enough so that she can give birth and restore hope in the future of mankind.
The movie makes an interesting and frightening assertion that mankind will not end with a bang from an asteroid or nuclear war or an act of God, but will gradually fizzle out and destroy itself, that we will bring it about ourselves, powerless to stop it even as it is happening around us. It's a scary thought, but one that we should really allow to affect the way we lead our lives and our international relationships