Children of Men Review

Overall Rating

Clive Owen's usual under acting style worked perfectly for this film.
Original directing choices.

Needed more music and heightened tension.

Children of men storyline:
A world struck with infertility. The youngest person has just be killed. Theodore Faren is offered 5k to transport a pregnant women to safety. All however is not as it seems.

Directing:
I saw the Children of Men film with a friend. The film has a bomb being set off within the first 5 minutes. My friend started counting down from five when Theodore (Clive Owen) placed his coffee down outside. The camera started circling round him and I realised a bomb was going off, as you so often can in films. However, when my friend reached 0 no bomb exploded. Around two seconds later the bomb did go off. Though this is just a small example, it shows how unpredictable the direction was. This sort of thing ran throughout the film. However, Alfonso Cuaron (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) could and should have put more emphasis on certain events, such as when Miriam (Pam Ferris) was taken off the coach taking people to be deported, as the music was used after she was out of sight. This heighted the emotion, but defeated the point to a large extent, as the scene was over. There were spots of inspired directing, when in a battle scene at one point blood splattered on the camera and stayed there for a few minutes. Also, when the baby was carried out of the hospital and all the fighting stopped when they walked past. As if it were the Messiah, yet when a explosion was caused the fighting was resumed. Showing how responsible humans can be and how they can simply ruin miracles with violence. The directing was mostly and almost 1st person type.

Acting:
Clive Owen's acting was perfect for this role. It was downcast and unlike his role in King Aurthur (a terrible film). Things happen to Theodore instead of him causing them.
There was no exceptional acting, apart from perhaps Jasper, although it is not worthy of note.
Pam Ferris was good in her role. It takes you a while to realise she's from Rosemary and Time.

The film is on the whole good. In manages to not be pretentious. There are perhaps too many action scenes. There never seems to be a center-point of high action. The scenes tend to pull you along rather that empathise with you, which is surprising considering the directing often follows the character in an almost 1st person 3rd person mix.

Members' Comments onQuibbon101's Review

• Mister Soft on 14th Nov 2006

  What I really liked about this film was the believability of the future - it was gritty and realistic which really helped me get into the film. I'm definitely planning on reading the book now but does anybody know how much the film differs from the book?

• DELTAGOLF on 8th Jan 2007

  Responding to Mister Soft's query: I have not read the book, but saw the film recently. However, a friend of mine read it and said it is noticeably different in many ways. He also added that the book is far superior to the film script.