Variety 9/2/06 - Review of COM - Thanks to Steph: By DEREK ELLEY An often grippingly realized portrait of a not-so-futuristic Blighty, in which fascism and infertility have become uneasy bed partners, Alfonso Cuaron's "Children of Men" is a fine but flawed exercise in dystopia. Much more effective when it's a down-and-dirty actioner than when the script tries to grapple with the multitude of personal and political issues raised, pic suffers from cold lead playing by Clive Owen but gains some heart and soul from a wonderfully eccentric perf by Michael Caine that's awards-season-worthy. Skedded for a fall rollout in Europe, but December release in the U.S., this looks likely to reap comfortable mid-range business. Set only 21 years in the future, in November 2027, pic -- based on the 1993 novel by British writer P.D. James, better known for her murder mysteries -- posits a world racked by infertility and social chaos, in which terrorism is the norm. The U.K., however, is a relative haven of peace -- "The world has collapsed; only Britain soldiers on," trumpets Brit-TV propaganda -- and as a consequence immigration is out of control. Cuaron
clearly got to know Blighty when shooting "Harry Potter
and the Prisoner of Azkaban." He paints a grungy, Orwellian country
of perpetual security announcements, prowling armed police, garbage
in the streets and illegal immigrants in cages -- in fact, not so different
from the U.K. Main difference from the present is that, due to a sudden outbreak of female infertility, there have been no births in the world since 2009. A surprising demo of what is to come on the action front is provided
in the opening sequence as activist-turned-bureaucrat Theo Baron (Owen)
is almost blown to pieces by a terrorist bomb in central London. Using
that as an excuse to take time off from his boring ministry job, he
travels out of town As soon as Theo gets back to London, he is kidnapped by the terrorist group Fishes, which campaigns for equal rights for all immigrants. Its leader turns out to be Julian Taylor (Julianne Moore), with whom Theo was a student activist 20 years ago and with whom he even had a kid that died. She offers the broke and heavy-drinking Theo a sizable sum to get transit papers for an illegal refugee, Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey), whom they're smuggling out of the country. Before he knows it, Theo is on the run with Kee -- from both the authorities and renegade members of Fish -- as Kee turns out to be eight months pregnant with the first child on Earth in 18 years. It's finally left to him to smuggle Kee to the shadowy offshore organization, The Human Project, a group of scientists dedicated to finding a cure for global infertility. Script by Cuaron and Timothy J. Sexton doesn't seem very interested in filling in background. The outbreak of infertility is never explained, The Human Project remains extremely lacking in detail, the global collapse of society is vaguely attributed to Islamic terrorism in newscasts caught, and why the neo-fascistic U.K. is sought out by so many immigrants is never made clear. On the personal side, Theo and Julian's backstory emerges only gradually, and doesn't do much to warm up the rather icy chemistry between thesps Owen and Moore in their relatively few scenes together. In fact, it's the promising young Ashitey (from "Shooting Dogs") who effectively becomes pic's femme lead, as the relationship between Theo and Kee blooms on the run. Aside from the two sequences in which Theo visits Jasper, pic's dialogue
hardly grapples with any of the broader issues thrown up by the script. Other cameos by well-known names are more hit-and-miss: Peter Mullan's turn as a pragmatic security guard adds extra spice to the socko final reels, whereas Danny Huston's, as a government minister, seems to have been imported from a different movie. However, on the action front, pic more than delivers: not in bang-for-your-buck spectacle but in the kind of gritty, docu-like sequences that haul viewers out of their seats and alongside the main protags. Along with camera operator George Richmond -- who shot the entire movie handheld in 16 weeks -- Cuaron orchestrates several lengthy single takes that have a front-line feel. These include an attack in a car (a single take that required a special rig for the camera to get inside and around the car) and the movie's showpiece climax. Latter single take recalls "Full Metal Jacket" in its landscape and "Black Hawk Down" in its intensity. Production and costume design have the utterly believable look of
the near future: more like the present day with a few tweaks. And Cuaron's
decision not to shoot in widescreen actually accentuates the movie's
gritty power. |