Slick production of pretentious claptrap

Rating: 4/10 (6 January 2007)

This well directed first rate production can't overcome the film's pretense that it is "deep" or "meaningful"; in fact, for all it's production value, the movie is, at its core, meritricious. Those reading the astonishing number of positive reviews beware--this is a classic example of viewers bringing preconceived expectations to a movie and then agreeing with their own pre-assessments even though the film they watched sorely missed the mark. At heart, the story is simple: the world has been infertile for unknown reasons for 18 years. As a result, everyone is in a bad mood for the entire film, except Michael Caine, who looks like a refugee from the 60's, growing marijuana, and giving avuncular advice to Clive Owen while getting high. Clive Owen, one of our great actors, is perfectly cast as an angry man working at a meaningless job while an apparent perpetual riot is ongoing in London, the last of the world's major cities not to have been destroyed. Ener Julianne Moore, divorced for 20 years from Mr. Owen. Nonetheless, she has him kidnapped to assist in a critical mission--the delivery to safety of a Young black woman (symbolically and obviously named Kee) who is about to have the world's first infant (obviously a woman) in nearly two decades. While one could think of twenty important issues raised by the premise of the film (religious, social, philosophical, etc.) the great failure of the film is that is doesn't deal with any of them--content to watch Owen scowl, Caine fart and various lunatics babble in foreign tongues. In any event, Owen undertakes this mission and effectively delivers the mother and child to safety. Left behind, however, is a nightmare of war, riot, lunacy, rival factions, and general mayhem. Are we supposed to believe that the birth of one child will transmogrify the "end of days" world she's born into? Who knows and who cares? The director's job is to make the issues surface--and not supply a story from which we can create our own meaning. As far as I'm concerned, the film was an equivalent of a blank canvass and the viewers are supposed to supply meaning to it. This ain't art history, it's film. In the end, I couldn't help comparing this film to Sam Mendes great failure "Road to Perdition"; while it was technically superior, it painted a small story on a big canvas and, ultimately, had nothing to say to me. Potential viewers are on notice!