- To the film's great credit, Children of Men doesn't waste any time trying to explore answers to "the ultimate mystery" of why people stopped having babies. There are a few throwaway explanations involving the usual suspects, "genetic experiments, gamma rays, pollution," but even these are only mentioned in the setup for a joke. Instead, the film concerns itself primarily with how humanity has reacted to the sudden onset of its twilight years, and the immediate impression is that we have reacted very badly. Fleeting glimpses of newscasts, interrupted only by ads for suicide pills, feature reports on closed borders and deportation. People casually mention unspecified tragedies in New York and Madrid, and many of the world's major cities appear to have experienced a complete upheaval. The report concludes on a somber note: "The World Has Collapsed: Only Britain Soldiers On."
- So how well has Britain gotten along? Well, things ain't exactly what they used to be. Never a particularly sunny city, London has taken on a sickly gray pallor eerily befitting of the new social norms. At the film's start, a coffee shop bombing nearly kills a man named Theo (Clive Owen) on the same day that "Baby Diego," the world's youngest man, is murdered for not granting a fan a signature. Looking perpetually disheveled and forlorn, Theo was once a social activist, but the death of his child some years ago has left him jaded and hopeless. His only joy in life these days stems from visiting his friend Jasper (Michael Caine), an aging hippie who lives in seclusion with his invalid wife. It is upon returning from one such visit that Theo is kidnapped and brought to a clandestine meeting with his ex-wife Julian (Julianne Moore). Whereas Jasper has retreated from society and Theo has simply given up, Julian is still quite literally fighting for justice. Her rebel group, The Fishes, has been charged by the government with committing various terrorist acts, but Julian wants to recruit Theo for a rather different kind of mission. She wants Theo to escort the only pregnant woman in the world to safety.
- So why should Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey), the colorful young woman in question, fear for her child's safety? After all, you'd think the world would be thrilled to see the first new baby in eighteen years. Well, Julian rightly suspects that both mother and child would be manipulated for political ends, particularly given Kee's refugee status. Unfortunately, Julian doesn't realize that Kee might not be the only one in need of protection. In one of the film's most shocking scenes, a pleasant van ride through the woods transforms into a brutal ambush that turns out to have been arranged by a splinter group within the Fishes (Chiwetel Ejiofor and Charlie Hunnam). One could imagine any of several action-oriented directors handling this scene well, given that the ingredients included a flaming car, a few dozen masked ambushers, and a motorcycle attack, but director Alfonso Cuaron outdoes them all with a riveting four-minute long take. Now Theo, Jasper, and Kee's nurse, the redoubtable Miriam (Pam Ferris), must find a way get Kee into the hands of a secret group known as The Human Project. Assuming they're not just a myth, that is.
- As their journey proceeds, however, we start to gather a clearer impression of just how awful the world has gotten. Trainloads of refugees stream through detention centers that are obviously meant to visually recall Abu Ghraib or Nazi concentration camps. Armed forces plow tanks through refugee ghettos as chaotic gun battles erupt in the streets. The film goes a bit too far in depicting only horrid security officers (Peter Mullan) and angelic, if incomprehensible, refugees (Oana Pellea), but that hardly invalidates the otherwise wonderfully pointed criticism of an all-too-recognizable police state. But then, in another wonderfully extended take, Kee gives birth to her child! For just a moment, the clouds are lifted. The soldiers stop shooting, and everyone looks on in awe. Will this baby really be "the miracle the whole world has been waiting for?" Don't get your hopes up. Once Theo and Kee get the baby safely away, the firefight quickly reignites. Maybe Theo was right when he said that the world "went to shit" long before this infertility thing happened. Sci-fi dystopias don't get much uglier than this, nor do they come much more beautifully filmed.
