Largely excellent, but slightly annoying in places...

Rating: 7/10 (9 April 2007)

Scene: 20 years from now. Britain is under the yoke of a fascist regime, a virtual police state in which ID cards are required at all times and illegal immigrants are herded into holding pens for deportation. Crazed feral savages roam the land, ambushing cars and throwing rocks at trains for no apparent reason, and the state TV channel pumps out propaganda 24/7.
It doesn't sound all that much different from 2007, but I digress.
The macguffin here is that the world is in the grip of a fertility crisis, no humans having been born for over 18 years. As the film begins, the world's youngest human - the last person ever born - has just been killed by a crazed fan, and a wave of Diana-style emotional incontinence ensues. Enter Clive Owen, a mild-mannered civil servant with a troubled past. One day, he is snatched off the street by his ex girlfriend who, it turns out, now runs some sort of pro-immigrant paramilitary organisation. She has an immigrant in her care whom she wants to smuggle out of the country for some reason, and she needs our Clive to provide the necessary documents.
Of course, when Clive meets the young immigrant she is up the stick in a major way, and his task is to transport her to some sort of offshore fertility research centre so she can be prodded and experimented on in the name of saving the human race. But he doesn't just have the Government to worry about - some rogue individuals hatch a plan to off his girlfriend and keep the pregnant girl to fuel their own ambitions...
The acting here is superb, with excellent performances from Owen, and from Michael Caine as "Jasper" (who may or may not be Clive's dad, there's a nice bit of ambiguity there). Charlie Hunnam steals the show as the Geordie traitor, Patric - "Blaydon Races" has never sounded so sinister! The cinematography is brilliant and creates just the right atmosphere; the car ambush scene has to be seen to be believed. The story is gripping, with just the right number of twists and turns to keep you interested.
There are a few niggles, however. The ending of the movie is a little annoying and leaves us with several unanswered questions (like, what happens next? Is humanity saved?) The movie doesn't explain how the world came to be in such a state of anarchy (was it entirely because of the fertility crisis, or would it have happened anyway?) or how women came to be infertile. A bit of fleshing out here would have helped the story enormously.
I also have a problem with the political stance of the movie, which I found to be too one-sided and simplistic. There are a number of pro-Muslim set pieces, perhaps alluding to the Israeli/Palestinian situation. The film-makers seem to be saying that Islam (or religion in general?) offers a path to peace, without articulating how or why.
The pro-immigration guys are mostly heroic freedom fighters, acting for the good of humanity, whereas the Government agents are a bunch of callous and sadistic fascists (there are a lot of non-too-subtle allusions to the Third Reich and the Holocaust here, particularly in the detention camp scenes). The Government may in fact have had perfectly legitimate reasons for wanting to restrict immigration, but this side of the argument is not shown here.
Overall, though, this is an extremely enjoyable movie, and I look forward to the inevitable sequel.