Reviewed - Children of Men: It's the end of the world as we're beginning to know it in Alfonso Cuarón's bleakly effective thriller, writes Michael Dwyer.
WELCOME back to the future, and the prognosis presented in Children of Men is as bleak and dystopian as just about every other vision offered since George Orwell set the template over 50 years ago. The film is based on a novel by another English author, PD James, whose novels have spawned over a dozen TV adaptations, although this is just the second for the cinema, after Chris Petit's 1982 An Unsuitable Job for a Woman.
Children of Men is set in 2027, when the world is in chaos and no birth have taken place in 18 years. Only Great Britain has survived, having responded to global upheaval with militaristic imperialism. It now has its own Department of Homeland Security, which cages immigrants in detention camps. Squalor is everywhere.
The BCC TV channel (closely resembling BBC World) broadcasts the news that the youngest person in the world - an 18-year-old still known as Baby Diego - has been killed by an autograph hunter in Buenos Aires, prompting an outbreak of mass grief and floral tributes that evokes the post-Diana world recalled in The Queen.
The living are grieving for themselves, too, because Diego's death serves as a harsh reminder of the infertility crisis that signals the end of the human race. For those who choose to speed the process, the government offers suicide kits euphemistically named Quietus.
Clive Owen is perfectly dissolute as Theo, a deeply disillusioned former activist bored with life as a civil servant. He is reluctantly drawn back into action when the Fishes, a revolutionary group led by his ex-lover (Julianne Moore), persuades him to arrange a transit pass for Kee (Claire-Hope Ashitey), an African "fugee".
Breaking the mould of the traditional screen saviour-hero, Theo accepts only because he is offered a lot of money. Then he discovers that Kee, through an unexplained, perhaps miraculous conception, is pregnant.
The only flashes of light and warmth in this cold, paranoia-steeped world come in Theo's meetings with a dope-smoking retired political cartoonist, engagingly played by Michael Caine with long grey hair and a penchant for woolly cardigans and playing air guitar.
Alfonso Cuarón, the versatile Mexican director of Y Tu Mamá También and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, eschews flashy special effects, grounding this creepy futuristic picture in harsh realism, shooting it entirely with handheld camera, and orchestrating the action sequences with dexterous flair. He shapes a salutary tale into thoughtful, dynamic cinema.
