Let me start out by saying that the cinematography and acting in this movie are very well done. It also has moments of humor, which were a nice touch in such a dark, dystopian movie. As a depiction of what an apocalyptic earth would
look like, it's about as good as it gets. That's why it gets 2 stars instead of 1.
That's it. Those are about the only good things that I can say about Children of Men. As for the bad, read on, but if you haven't seen it yet, be warned that there are spoilers ahead.
Children of Men unmistakably sets the tone for its liberal propagandizing from the get-go. In one of the opening scenes the camera pans across old newspaper clippings pinned to the wall in the home of a hippie/activist named Jasper, played by Michael Caine. Featured prominently amongst these clippings is a newspaper article with the big, bold headline "STOP THE WAR IN IRAQ." Keep in mind that this movie takes place 20 years in the future. Now, I don't know about you guys, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that even the staunchest critics of the Vietnam war did not still have in the year 1995 paper clippings from 1975 that read "STOP THE WAR IN VIETNAM" taped prominently beside their dresser mirrors. The only conclusion that can be gathered from this seeming anamoly is that the film is clearly (and outrageously) trying to get the audience from the start to mentally associate the Bush administration's decisions in Iraq with the dark, hopeless, apocalyptic future they are about to reveal to us in the rest of the movie. The rest of the movie is peppered with reminders of the United States' war on terror (I wonder where Cuaron got the idea to write "HOMELAND SECURITY" across all the government buses in the film?). Heck, as the movie went on I couldn't help but feel that the filmmakers really just wanted to say that George Bush himself will one day cause infertility in all women across the planet, which will in turn lead to widespread deportations of illegal immigrants, which will in turn result in the destruction of the earth. Sound like a completely absurd premise? The only thing more absurd is that that is esentially the logic that "Children of Men" intends that you accept.
Once the liberal tone of the film is so blatantly set by the albeit brief but calculated moment with the newspaper clipping, the audience is expected to sit back and simply consume the rest of its propagandous (not a word, I know, but should be) message without protest. For example, no explanation is given, and is apparently assumed to be unnecessary, to explain why the British government has taken such a harsh stance on illegal immigration - ruthlessly deporting anyone without proper identification. Sure what the government is doing looks really egregious to our year 2007, pre-apocalyptic eyes, and the filmmakers want us to accept that proposition without much debate, but shouldn't we at least be told some of the government's reasoning so that instead of being force-fed the conclusion that a government that deports illegal immigrants like that must be unjust, we can at least come to our own conclusions about it? For goodness sakes, I didn't even know why or how illegal immigration was logically connected to women's infertility! Can it really be that such an essential aspect of the movie's main plot could be left entirely unexplained? Shockingly, in Children of Men, it can.
What makes all this ironic is that one of the themes of the movie is that people should not be afraid to question their government. Why then do the filmmakers expect us to accept that the British government is unquestionably corrupt? Perhaps the government is corrupt, but the point is that a good movie gives me the opportunity to decide that for myself based on actual evidence. In fact, the only evidence I saw for why the government did what it did was that every other major city in the world had completely collapsed and been thrust into total anarchy. If complete annihilation is the alternative, then maybe a government that goes to extraordinary lengths to crack down on illegal immigration isn't so unquestionably "evil" after all.
Now to the whole infertility thing. It's a great concept for a movie, it's just too bad that this movie couldn't do more with it. And by "more with it," I mean give any logical explanation for why it happened or any coherent explanation for its effect on society. Let's put aside the glaring fact that if it was a virus that caused the infertility, there is no way that it could possibly have spread to every remote part of the world without people somewhere being able to quarantine themselves from it. And yeah, I get it, there's a deep message about losing hope because infertility means there is no future for mankind. But people, it's only been 18 years. This movie just could not convince me why in 18 years the entire planet essentially self-destructs. Even worse, I couldn't really get behind the whole "Save Kee, Save the World" story (which, by the way, was the essentially the entire story) because it was never clear to me that Kee's fertility would have any effect on the world anyway. Are we really to believe that one birth will suddenly stop the inexplicable self-destruction of the earth? And if it's true that others might also start giving birth again, then why do we care about Kee? We don't even know that she holds the answer to anything. The whole thing might be completely meaningless! How am I supposed to root for these characters if I'm not even sure that what they are trying to accomplish will amount to anything at all? If there had been one scene, just one scene, where a doctor revealed that Kee's DNA actually held the key to unlocking the infertility problem, then at least I would have been ready and willing to emotionally invest myself in her and Clive Owen's quest for the ship Tomorrow (wow, pretty subtle). Without it, I honestly just didn't care what would happen to her.
I've never read the book, but the biggest problem with "Children of Men" the movie is that it took a great concept (that one day in the future all women become infertile) and then mucked it all up by desperately trying to tie in its own propagandous message about today's politics with a story that gave no explanation as to why anything was happening. And worst of all, I felt insulted almost the entire time that the filmmakers quite clearly expected me to blindly gobble it all up and ask for more. Sadly, as you can tell by the mostly positive reviews for this movie, this is exactly what most people who saw this movie did. If you're like me and you don't want to be force-fed ideology or you like to see movies that are logically coherent, then you'd be wise to stay away from Children of Men. If on the other hand you believe that George Bush is the single greatest threat to female fertility and that this will one day result in the inexplicable destruction of the world, then hop in your hybrid - don't walk or run - and get to your local theater.