Children Of Men

Children Of Men


8.4


At first when I saw the title Children Of Men, I thought it was just a typical horror flick. But then when I heard how good it was ( It was 2nd ranked by Peter Travers of Rolling Stone as one of the best movies of the last decade) I thought 'Yeah I should give it a try. Let's see how it is'.

Children Of Men takes place in 2027 and it has been 18 years since the last child was born. Now he then got killed and London bureaucrat Theo (Clive Owen) seems to cared since he used to be an activist for an unknown cause. Now, England is being controlled by British police and the government turns totalitarian with its policies on illegal immigrants. The immigrants also known as Fugees come in great numbers to England. Not only that, all of the world women's are infertile so there were no kids born between 2009 and the year the film is set.

Theo is asked by his ex-girlfriend Julian (Julianne Moore), the leader of The Fishes, an anti government organisation with a set of beliefs on human rights, to help an African refugee Kee to escape from England to the Human Project so she can be able to look after her unborn baby. Julian is killed afterwards and when Theo discovers that the Fishes' were responsible for Julian's death, he decided to bring Kee along with Fishes member Miriam themselves to a boat.

Children Of Men looks similar, in a way, to District 9 released last year. They're both set in the future and it's kinda has the same concept. Both have issues with immigration and racism. Even though District 9 focused on aliens, Children Of Men focused on humans and it is anything apart from science fiction.

The movie's cinematography and direction from Alfonso Cuaron (he directed Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkerban) is so gritty with an idealistic screenplay from Timothy J Sexton.

Clive Owen brings in subtlety towards his character. You would want to care for him as well as the pregnant Kee. Julianne Moore puts in a nice performance as well as Michael Caine who suprisingly plays a hippie with his posh accent.

Interestingly, Cuaron has the camera around in one take making it one scene held for a long time while things are still happening. This takes the film into and around the edge even when the film is put as an experiment. But unless you can handle it while watching, you're more likely to get sick because many scenes are shot hand held.

Cuaron takes the plot into more ideas as we predict of facing a crisis on illegal immigrants and infertility. One thing is that when Kee gave birth, the baby is a symbolism of hope during one scene where the Fishes and the British military are in conflict. This also takes up rebellion, as the Fishes show how violent activists are when are taking on the government over issues affecting them.

When Australia is facing a problem with our overpopulation, and just recently a Chinese dissentant who is a human rights activist is awarded the Nobel Peace Price, Children Of Men's main focus is human rights. Whenever you look in the background you see guards treating migrants as dirt and mostly putting them to death and it promotes this awareness through the mass media as you'll see slogans such as 'Report Illegal Immigrants' everywhere.

So is Children Of Men is as perfect as it should be? Quite not. I think it would have been better if Julianne Moore (I have to admit, I never seen her in film before) and Michael Caine had more screen time instead of just dying. That would have been character development had their characters never been killed

Children of Men is a futuristic movie with a difference. It is all about to keep the survival of a person holding the key of the endangered human race. To say that a science fiction needs ideas to keep us entertained can be an exagerration, but Children Of Men is one of those movies in the genres that has many ideas that will keep us in grips.