Very fascinating dystopian film

Rating: 9/10 (7 February 2011)

I thought this was a really striking movie, very different from any of the (many) futuristic or post-apocalyptic movies that I've seen before and much more visceral than what we usually see in terms of action/sci-fi with big budgets these days. There were some scenes in this movie, like the one where they encountered he burning car/roadblock and the rushing marauders, where I was really overwhelmed by the intensity of the scene, and I was watching it on video on my 32" screen! I can't even imagine really how intense those scenes were in the theater.
Cuaron really knows how to direct, he's very inventive and everything he does is just stylish enough that it feels right but not obvious enough to draw attention to itself. I can't say enough about his talent from just the few movies I've seen and particular this one; he's as good as anybody else out there right now and seems to have better taste in material than some. I happen to like directors who only cut the film when they need to. Nobody would call the direction of this movie "old fashioned", and Cuaron's long takes never linger on landscape portraiture -- he's just as innocent of the abuses of the long take as he is of the abuses of the short take.
I really enjoyed the whole design of the movie -- there's a lot of detail that doesn't draw attention to itself, it feels like a real world that people could inhabit as compared to 99% of futuristic scenarios. Even the films that are more of a "nightmare scenario" than this one don't really convey it with as much complexity or apparent spontaneity. It seems more lived-in than any future world we've seen since "Blade Runner." As far as the story and the characters, I found the whole thing very compelling and constantly surprising. Clive Owen was perfect; his obvious personal magnetism is just repressed enough and just generic enough in its quality that he seems like a still-life of a fully developed animal, like a flower that was frozen in half-bloom. I enjoyed all the character performances, especially Michael Caine as Jasper, a truly admirable bohemian cat who unfortunately found himself in the middle of this movie.
All "dystopian" films portray an environmental collapse on some level or the other. This film is different because it portrays it on a more personal level instead of an epic scale. Where the film does approach the epic, especially in the big scenes involving the hotel towards the end, I think it is weakened somewhat. Like the hero, it just barely manages to limp out to the exit with its original ideals more or less intact. Which is saying quite a lot considering how ambitious this film is -- it has such a heavy message but it's not really a sentimental or exploitative treatment.