Children of Men
This was part of a New Years Eve film thing with a friend (along with copious gin).
In the near future, humans have lost the ability to breed. The youngest person on earth is 18 and extinction is all but assured. That is until, by some miracle, a woman, Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey), becomes pregnant. An underground movement must get her to something called “The Human Project”, a nebulous group based on an offshore ship. To do this, the underground is mobilized by Julian (Julianne Moore) who recruits her ex-husband Theo (Clive Owen) to escort Kee to safety (although exactly why is not revealed until later).
This is a nearly perfect movie. The tension and violence is palpable and given extra umph by the documentary style film making used in some of the fire fights. The hand-held camera running through the fire fight could be any war zone anywhere in the world. People being shot, bombs, cars, and buildings exploding, and even blood hitting the lens adds to the realism.
While the atmosphere isn’t post-apocalyptic, in the cliche sci-fi sense, it’s certainly disparate and bleak. Because there are no children, society is collapsing (and it may be that the rest of the world has already ceased to exist; I’ll have to pay more attention to that on the next viewing), and the British response is deposit all non-citizens in a walled off city. The brutality and savageness with which the government treats the immigrants is startling. Maybe it’s because it’s an election year, but I couldn’t help but think this is exactly the sort of Amerkia that Mitt Romney and Lou Dobbs want to create.
But aside from that, the story is very compelling. The underground movement, it turns out, is much less interested in protecting Kee and the baby that using them for some terroristic political gain, unrelated to the pregnancy.
I have to agree with John, though, that the whole mystery of the Human Project and the Tomorrow ship didn’t work. Unless the British have completely lost their seafaring capability (and they haven’t as there are fighter jets patrolling the sky), there would be no problem locating the ship. Whether the Project exists or not doesn’t seem to be much of mystery. How to contact them might be unknown, but it’s existence is certain.
