over-hyped, overrated

Rating: 2/10 (7 January 2007)

This plot is ridiculous. For some unexplained reason, all the women in Britain in 2027 are infertile. Or are all the men sterile? Is it a sperm-thing, an egg-thing, a uterus-thing, a vagina-thing? No one seems to know or care why, which doesn't inspire me to want to understand either.
And all the other countries of the world are annihilated? Is that it? Again, no one seems to know or care, and I didn't either. Clive Owen sure didn't care about the plight of the world; he was just sucked into a chaotic and baffling activist-driven rescue mission, because he happens to be the former husband of Julianne Moore, who's in the movie for 15 minutes and hands the mantle of leadership over to Mr. Owen, who very reluctantly agrees to help. Not very convincing for the ostensible hero of a thriller movie.
Really, he didn't seem to care about his character's plight, and this reflected poorly on the other actors, too. Even the female lead, newcomer Claire-Hope Ashitey, seemed to be sleep-walking through much of the scenes.
This is the ultimate example of lazy writing. The screenwriter doesn't want to extend the energy to give a little context for his character's plight. The director plods them through all these ridiculous, long-winded conversations about their rescue mission, and the chases are unrealistic and boring. By the time they reached the end of their mission, everyone around me in the theater seemed to be appropriately confused and ready to ask for their money back.