Atrocious. A travesty of PD James's not very good book

Rating: 1/10 (27 September 2007)

I was lukewarm about the book, but the film is atrocious. The Mexican director has thrown away almost everything that was good about the book - mostly the first part - and retained just the concept and the names of the characters, and written his own left-wing political thriller about illegal immigrants and Guantanamo Bay. He has produced a trivial shoot 'em up, noisy, foul-mouthed story with poor continuity. If you want to hear the dialogue, turn the sub-titles on, but if you don't, you will hardly have missed anything. I looked in vain for how people would really react to a world without children. Where was the use as pets as substitutes? Where were the deserted playgrounds? Instead of ennui from Clive Owen, all we got was a colossal sulk. Too little was made of the idea of Quietus. I can understand how a movie like this fits with the current tribe of critics, armchair revolutionaries to a man, but PD James is a Church of England old lady, regretting the passing of pleasure and deserves better than this.