Reviewer Film Ratings:
Plot: 4 | Fun Factor: | Gore: 4 | Nudity: 1 | Scare Factor: 2 | Overall: 4/5

A Bleak and Beautiful Vision
Reviewed by Rob Mead

Most epic movies on the scale of visionary director’s Alfonso Cuaron ground breaking modern day classic “Children of Men” suffer greatly when viewed again on a typical 45-inch HDTV, but because this movie also contains phenomenal plot twists, superb acting from the two leads, Julianne Moore and Clive Owen, this thinking-man’s science fiction film packs a wallop no matter how big or how small your viewing screen happens to be. In the year 2027, Earth has turned into a nightmarish world in which man is pitted against man in an on-going battle just to survive the day without being blown apart by machine-gun fire or a nearby bomb. The film shows us how England will be the one country in the world that contains even the smallest amount of humanity but is still a country that locks up and sometimes kills the many thousands of refugees still flocking to the area, trying to escape from certain death by their own gun-crazed countrymen. Theo Faron (Clive Owen), is forcibly recruited by a gang of men and women including Julianne Moore’s character to help a young woman escape the tyrannical and fascistic English government by stowing her away by land and by sea so she can join an organization that will supposedly keep her and her newborn baby safe. The fact that this young woman is pregnant and will have the baby more than mid-way through the movie is a big one. The main reason our future planet has fallen to the chaos and madness that will end with our own extinction is because there has not been one instance of a woman giving birth in at least fifteen years. That means that all of humanity has lost hope in the future of mankind, so what’s the point of living a nice and safe life when all hope is gone? Knowing this, Theo decides to do whatever he can to ensure the safety of this pregnant woman, even at the risk of his own death, thinking that if one child can be born in the hellish world he is trapped in that there might be a small glimmer of hope after all. While watching this Blu-Ray movie on my own HDTV, I did not notice any loss of clarity during the action sequences at all when compared to the theatrical viewing I witnessed in 2006, when this movie was first released. It obviously helps that the Blu-Ray DVD does an excellent job of showcasing cinematographer’s Emmanuel Lubezki’s uncanny ability to get the audience directly into the line of fire during the various gun battles and exciting car chases that this film contains at a mind-numbing pace. The entire movie features so many break-through moments during the action sequences that this movie is now shown in film schools as the perfect film model for aspiring students who really want to figure out how to create compelling and thought-provoking movies that can also deliver stunning action at the same time. After viewing this spectacular movie for the third time, I can concur with the fact that “Children of Men” should be viewed by anyone even nominally interested in watching a movie than can produce such a visceral and heart-wrenching experience that Cuaron’s modern-day masterpiece brings to the movie-going audience.