Acts as a warning.

Rating: 9/10 (3 February 2010)

Its 2027. It's been eighteen years since the last human birth, and the youngest person alive is a celebrity. However the world has fallen into decline with England barely above the heap, or as Jarvis Cocker points out in his closing credits song Running The World, s*t floats. It's a police state with a strict policy of no immigrants. Terrorism is rife but for Theo (Clive Owen), he has left his idealist days far behind. He simply wants to get on with living, but his past isn't through with him just yet. The underground movement has a task for him, which has ramifications for the entire world.
Alfonso Cuarón, (And Your Mother Too, Harry Potter 3) paints a very bleak view, it's always overcast and wet, but that's part of the canvas he's working with. It's a polluted world, a world where train stations are guarded by soldiers and suspected immigrants herded off into camps, (not far removed from now really). The film has a lot to say about immigration, government policy, overpopulation, ambition, the chasm between the classes, but as all good films should, it shows us rather than telling us.
Cuarón uses his hand-held cameras to set us alongside Theo; we don't see anything unless he does, as he caught up in a situation where he has no control. He's just trying to survive from one moment to the next. Cuarón uses extended takes to place us within the scenes themselves, particularly in two remarkable set pieces. There were times when I was reminded of Act II from Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket and the comparison is not without justification. This is a director dominant behind the wheel. There is a lot to admire in Timothy Sexton's screenplay, based on P.D. James' novel, who understands the film language that less is more.
The cast is superb, with Julianne Moore and Michael Caine (still one of the busiest actors around) getting all the best lines. However it's the supporting cast that really shine, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Pam Ferris and Peter Mullan as Syd who almost steals the show.
This is a future easily imagined, a post terrorist world where the small percentage of the population with wealth cling to it with disregard to those with nothing. This film works as a taut thriller, but also acts as a warning. For too long we have sat idly by enjoying the fruits of our development without thought to where we are going. This year, 2006, has put up a stop sign with a glimpse to that future if we do not begin to act; global warming, overpopulation, dying resources, the majority who have nothing and the threat of a pandemic.
Next to An Inconvenient Truth, this is the most important film of the year. Even as a piece of entertainment, it still ranks of one of the best.