Children of Men

This afternoon was mostly taken up with a viewing of Children of Men. No spoilers here unless you’re really sensitive to things like knowing that it takes place in England. Some random impressions:

• It’s one of the most realistic, and therefore effective, near-future representations I’ve seen; I read some of the headlines in the newspapers on the windows where Julian and Theo meet and I can absolutely envision them happening in the next twenty-odd years.
• Jasper has a line of dialogue about a future-past event that I’m certain was the seed that started the whole storyline.
• I was surprised twice at where Jasper’s story went, given one of the stories Julian told about Theo’s past and an event that was telegraphed as a red herring later on.

So was Children of Men any good? Clive Owen (Theo) was, definitely; Peter Mullan (Syd) and Michael Caine (Jasper) were entertaining; and although I was initially annoyed by Pam Ferris (Miriam) and Claire-Hope Ashitey (Kee) they grew on me and had me caring about what happened to their characters. And it’s a great concept; a somewhat familiar one, but turned on its head. But the last act left me cold. From the first scene, and for the rest of the first two-thirds of the movie, I was completely bought-in, yet somewhere around the bus ride I started to lose the vibe and by the end it seemed to just be going through the motions. (The soundtrack under the abrupt closing title card was a nice touch, though.)

A solid three stars out of four. Readers of Mr. Ebert’s will recognize the use of his scale, and should also remember his caveat about comparing artistic works using absolute numeric values.