Film

Children Of Men

Kirsten Banks 29/09/2006

Rating: 4/5

The year is 2027 and Britain is now a fascist, totalitarian state, with video cameras in even more abundance than the present day and gun laws that seem to be more relaxed than they are in Texas. Based on the P.D James novel, and obviously borrowing form Orwell's vision of nineteen-eighty-four, the film presents humanity as just a shadow of its former self. Immigration has gone totally out of control, with specially built camps within which immigrants are beaten and left to die. This aspect of the film is typical of the controversial issues with which "The Children of Men" engages with.

Clive Owen gives a brilliant performance as an inconspicuous city worker who has been unexpectedly thrown into a world of violence and terrorism whilst Michael Caine plays a brilliant supporting role as an old hippy who grows pot in his living room to the sounds of The Monkees. One slight criticism of the film would be that it is sometimes unclear as to what the objective of the film actually is. Although a work of obvious consideration and conviction, the relationship between the film's themes of infertility and immigration is very one sided, tending, at times, to be a critique of current immigration laws rather than the story of an fertile woman in an infertile world. Either way "The Children of Men" is a brilliant piece of work, quite breath taking in its execution.