Children Of Men DVD > Reviews > Better Than I Expected

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Liked it
Story	Good
Characters / Performances	Good
Special Effects	Good
How does it compare to similar films?	Good

Advantages:	Reasonably paced story
Disadvantages:	None for me, But I can see where others may disaprove

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Children Of Men is another one of those movies that divides the audience. I have read dozens of reviews stating it’s either the best thing since sliced bread, or that it’s totally up itself. With such a divided swing of votes I decided it was something that I definitely needed to see.

It’s London in 2007 and office worker Theo Faron makes his way on his normal route to work. Having stopped off at his favourite coffee shop, he finds the customers staring in belief at the television screens. It seems that Baby Diego the youngest person on the Earth at just over 18 has died, killed by a fan. Not much of a follower of this sort of thing, while the world goes to pieces Theo makes his way to work, in Theo’s world Baby Diego was a non entity, in a subtle way it seems that his death gives Theo a certain amount of pleasure. But there is no time to think, while making his way along the high street a shop explodes, the target of terrorists.

Theo himself becomes the victim of terrorists to some extent a few days later when he is kidnapped. After an initially alarming experience he is confronted by Julian Taylor, the leader of a sort of resistance; who just happens to be a lost love. Having total trust in Theo, Julian asks him to take you Fijian Kee to Brighton. While reluctantly accepting believing that Kee is just an illegal immigrant, Theo soon discovers this is not the only issue. Kee is the first woman to fall pregnant on the earth in over 18 years.

This world that Children Of Men is set in is a hostile one. Nobody is capable of having children, and anyone that could be found to be able to conceive would certainly become a victim in the sort of Neo-Nazi regime that is referred to as the government. In this future world everywhere except England has fallen through war, whole countries are in anarchy if they exist at all. Immigrants as such are an issue, England will no longer except anyone considered as “foreign” they are sent back to their own country, or held in what looks like Concentration camps.

I initially wondered why some people were so incensed by Children Of Men, as I said in my opening paragraph it seems to have a strong swing in both directions. It seems that American’s hate the movie more than English people, I wondered why? Could it be that wavy camerawork almost like a documentary at times? Could it be a little too artsy? Or could it be that the first place described to fall during all the wars was America? I’m not knocking our American cousins, but a quick flit through of Hollywood movies and it seems America has never lost a war. Even the ones that are told factually where we know the war was lost, American cinema nearly always shows the day being won even if the battle is not; to sort of appease a healing nation. Maybe this is just too much, almost an insult to think that America would fall will England still plods on. In similar American movies England always falls first, and here we reverse that. It’s a typical one up-man-ship situation that occurs when two parties have similar attributes.
Maybe it’s none of those reasons, maybe it’s some of them, maybe it’s all of them.
What about our home based critics? In my opinion it’s another one of those situations where the movie was so promoted, and praised over here that many had false expectations, excepting something better than the reality. I ignored as usual, all the publicity, I caught what the story was about then closed my eyes and ears until the time was right.

I really enjoyed The Children Of Men, while it was unlikely to make my top ten movies of the year it reminded me in ways of some of my favourite shows as a child. The Survivors, and The Day Of The Triffid’s being the key titles. Even to more recent times ITV’s 1999 drama The Last Train. All of these TV shows showed Earth in an end of days sort of scenario, and primarily from an English standpoint. With the exception of the Triffid’s downfall in both those shows was caused by government as it was here.

The story is pretty well put together, shot in a very much greyscale manner in order to provide a real feeling of bleakness. With a few patchy moments where a little more momentum could have been installed, the movie trundles along at a fairly brisk pace. A nice element of this movie is that its not rocket science, everything is pretty well explained you don’t need to be in the dark about anything that has or is happening, which I believe is an achievement; it seems that everyone that sees the film gets it, and this is often not the case in this sort of movie. Once all the key characters are introduced the story relentlessly picks off cast members to bring in an element of shock. With the exception of Clive Owen’s character Theo, it appears nobody is safe. An attribute I find most commendable in TV or Film.

The cast is an odd bunch Clive Owen leads the way, unfortunately playing exactly the same character he normally does, a reasonably cold individual with a big heart. Julianne Moore pops up as Julian presumably her presence was to secure the American part backers funding; I really like Julianne Moore but her role is little more than a glorified cameo, a shame that one of the most beautiful women in American cinema, and certainly one of the most talented seems to spend less than five minutes on screen. Then you have Jasper, played by Michael Caine who like Owen plays the same sort of role as usual, except in this movie he is an aging, drug using hippie; and like all of Caine’s performances your warming to him as soon as the movie starts. Pam Ferris pops up as the midwife for Kee, Ferris drives her performance from quirky to dead serious and for me was the best and most subtle performer of the lot. Finally Claire-Hope Ashity who plays Kee, annoyingly Ashity seems to forget that she is playing a Fijian and frequently movies tongues from Fijian which at times is quite inaudible to a real clarity and an East End accent. While her performance is strong, her accent is not.

I guess you can look at Children Of Men and see potential links to out future, one interesting factor that I was expecting to find was that there was little or no mention of global warming. Instead a great flu seemed to be the cause of the death, and the infertility of the world. The movie has a lot of impressive shot locations, busy shopping streets taken over to make the movie, while much was obviously made in sets there was a lot of “real location” influence. I really liked Bexhill which had been turned into a massive immigration centre and sort of prison, the whole place had a look of real war torn terror about it, and it literally could be Iraq.

Special Features

• "The Possibility Of Hope:" A Documentary by Alfonso Cuarón – A look at the world of Children Of Men which draws comparisons to other world atrocities in particular Iraq. It also focuses on the what ifs should this sort of situation arrive, and the probable effects had the movie continued where the credits took off.

• "Men Under Attack" featurette – A brief look at the action and fighting scenes.

• Commentary by Slavoj Zizek – This was good once you understood what was being said. Zizek mumbles or over pronounces things, and his story fragments. More amusingly this is not a conventional commentary. I’m a little confused by it and believe that someone else should have done this. I don’t want to explain why but within the first 3 minutes you’ll know exactly what I mean.

• "Visual Effects: Creating The Baby" featurette – This literally speaks for itself, and its addition is quite pointless, so much time is dragged out on this simple effect.

• "Theo and Julian:" Commentary from Clive Owen and Julianne Moore – Now this is a good commentary however Julianne has little to say as for most of the movies production she was out of it. Owen on the other hand says rather a lot, and my respect for the actor has grown slightly. Listening to him laugh hysterically at a scene that might cause someone to cry is amusing to say the least.

• Deleted Scenes – A few patchy scenes, but some of them are just extended scenes which are a bit annoying. I got through two and then then fast forwarded to make sure I never missed anything good…. I never!

Children Of Men the 2 Disc edition is available from play.com priced £13.99. Expect to see this price fall come August however as the blockbuster from Jan-March make there way onto DVD.