A strong premise and great cast prompted my interest, but the movie falls short of its promise. Clive Owens gives a great performance and a few of the scenes are remarkably memorable and resonant. However, there are very long stretches where the movie simply stagnates and the plot drifts away, especially towards the end. Overall, it's rather melancholy and despite the "action" scenes, not especially thrilling. If you like sci-fi movies set in dystopian futures, or are a big Clive Owen fan, you may still find it worth watching despite its flaws. An aside: One of the "extras" on the DVD has some heavily accented academic trilling at length about the movie's philosophical meaning. It's entertainingly over-the-top and almost unintelligible: jargon piled into a Dagwood sandwich of contradictory abstractions. Anyway, if you don't watch too much of it, its good for a laugh.

Cuaron's masterpiece so far (including Gravity, which was gravely miscast). This film is: a) easily the best film of the decade of the 2000's; b) the finest dystopia film since 'A Clockwork Orange' and probably the best sci-fi since '2001: A Space Odyssey'; and c) all the evidence you need that Clive Owen should have been selected as James Bond in place of Daniel Craig. Heartily recommended to anyone interested in how great both science fiction and cinema can possibly be. You may be depressed with the state of both the world and mankind, after watching it, but you won't be disappointed in the possibilities of cinema.

**Thought provoking piece of art !!** **CHILDREN OF MEN**....How a baby's cry can make the whole world stop, the bullets stop flying in a war, people forget all their pain, the only thing that matters is how to make that precious gift of god smile again..The movie depicts it beautifully! When the world is falling apart, coming to its end, how a THEO does things that he otherwise would have not done for anything or anybody else...It doesn't seems practical that how at every point of time there is somebody to see them sail through, but that is all LIFE is about...HOPE...There's a THEO in everyone of us...It's in our hands...to choose, THEO or Luke...The world will surely end someday but till then we must all protect the CHILDREN OF MEN, protect the world...Do our bit for the mother earth..!! **P.S. - loved the laughter of the babies in the end!!** Scenes I LOVED - 1. When Julian was shot. 2. When Theo thought Jasper was dead. 3. When Dylan was born. 4. When Theo said to Luke "It's a GIRL" 5. When Marichka expressed she isn't coming. There may be more, but these are all I remembered. Michael Caine was adorable as always, Julianne Moore was pretty, Clive Owen was perfect, Kee was sweet, Miriam was, don't know, clean...at heart !

James

Oct 22, 2023

7.0

One of the bleakest, most magnificently crafted films of all time. The dialogue is one-of-a-kind in actually capturing realism.

CinemaSerf

Aug 17, 2024

7.0

With a society almost entirely devoid of children, the worst news descends as the world's youngest person - merely eighteen - is murdered. Mankind is looking extinction in the face unless a group of anti-establishment folks led by "Julian" (Julianne Moore) and "Luke" (Chiwitel Ejiofor) can get the pregnant young "Kee" (Clare-Hope Ashitey) to safety. To that end, they recruit her unwilling ex-husband "Theo" (Clive Owen) to try and get her from a locked-down Britain to the sea and perhaps to safety in Europe. He has a minor job in the administration that might be able to deliver some transit papers, but this isn't going to be an easy task as nobody can find out the condition of his fellow-traveller. With violence surrounding them and just about everyone in pursuit as an uprising looms, their journey becomes more and more perilous - but can they make it? Now Owen is one of my least favourite British actors. He's up there with the equally wooden Sean Bean, but here he does manage to carry off the role of the vigilante-type survivor who thinks on his feet constantly, unsure who is friend or foe, whilst only really able to rely on the charismatic "Jasper" (Sir Michael Caine) who lives a life with his ailing wife, secluded from society and it's problems. This is a quickly paced drama and the visual effects use only a modicum of pyrotechnics. For the most part it's the photography that sells us this story. The depiction of a city, a country and a society ruined from the inside out - all because it can't perpetuate it's own species. Could things really collapse into anarchy and lawlessness this comprehensively?

specimenb

Aug 10, 2026

8.0

*Children of Men* is one of the most gripping dystopian films I’ve seen. Alfonso Cuarón creates a future that feels frighteningly lived-in rather than flashy, and the story’s sense of hopelessness makes its small moments of compassion and hope hit even harder. What impressed me most was Emmanuel Lubezki’s cinematography. The extended takes—especially the car ambush and the chaotic journey through the battle-torn refugee camp—don’t feel like empty technical showpieces; they put you directly inside the danger with Theo. The handheld camera, naturalistic lighting, and near-documentary look make every moment feel immediate and uncomfortably real. Some of the apparent single shots were created through complex choreography and seamless visual-effects joins, but the result is still astonishing.wikipedia+1 Clive Owen gives the film a grounded, weary center, and the production design fills the background with details that make this collapsing world feel disturbingly plausible. *Children of Men* is bleak and intense, but it earns its optimism—and its filmmaking is simply unforgettable.