*** Spoiler Alert ***

This past weekend I watched Children of Men on DVD. I had seen the trailer and a 30 minute show about the making of the movie on the SciFi channel so I knew it was a movie I wanted to watch. I liked Children of Men a lot, but not for the reasons I thought I would. I’ll get to why I like the movie shortly.

For those of you not familiar, Children of Men is set in 2027. The entire world has pretty much fallen into anarchy. Only Britain, which is where the movie is set, is able to continue on with any sort of civility. Terrorism is rampant, but the government combats it by deporting illegal immigrants and working in a military state with road checkpoints and internment camps. The main thing they point out is that no babies have been born since 2009. As the movie progresses we find out that no one knows why women stopped having children, but that at the time it happened pregnant women all over the world were having miscarriages and those that were not pregnant were not able to get pregnant. The movie starts with the youngest person alive being stabbed in a fight. He was 18 years old. The main character, Theo, starts the movie by just missing being killed by a bomb in a coffee shop. We learn that he works in the Department of Energy in some nameless desk job. He gets pulled into a plan to help get a girl, Kee, to the coast by his ex-wife Julian. After agreeing to help because of an offer to pay him $5000 he soon finds out this is not an ordinary girl. She is pregnant and he is to help get her to a group of scientist who have a medical ship disguised as a fishing boat.

I thought I was going to like Children of Men because it was an action/sci-fi movie. In reality, the only thing sci-fi I saw in the whole movie was a brief glimpse at Theo’s cubical showing a futuristic looking computer monitor. There were action elements in the movie (car chases, gun battles, explosions, etc) but where an action movie would highlight these points Children of Men shows how they effect Theo and Kee. The movie is not shot like a normal action movie either. Instead of showing a whole scene where a fight is occurring the camera follows Theo around. It reminded me a lot of how the camera work is done in Battlestar Gallactica. It sort of seems like a documentary being filmed about Theo. The camera was always there following him. When their car was being chased the camera was in the car with them showing the chase from within the car. When Theo is running to escape a gun fight the camera follows instead of focusing on the battle. It was different than most movies I see, but I really enjoyed it.

Towards the end of the movie it becomes evident that Kee is going to have the baby before they get where they are going. My only complaint about the whole movie was the scene where Kee gives birth. The whole thing takes place in under a minute. A couple quick pushes and out came the baby. I’m not sure extending the scene would have added to the movie at all, but it would have added to the realism a little. After the child is born there is a very moving scene where Theo is trying to get Kee and her baby out of a building that is filled with rebels and is being attacked by the army. As they begin to head out of the building the baby starts crying. All of the civilians in the building line the halls to see the baby, the first in 18 years, as they walk through. No one stops them as the walk. A few people reach out to touch the child’s feet, but mostly they just look in awe. As they approach the exit the army storms in and the first soldier sees the baby and calls for a cease fire. They walk out through the soldiers who stop fighting to look at the baby. As they get further away from the building a rocket is fired from the building the the silence of the cease fire is broken as the soldiers turn from watching the baby and return fire.

Theo and Kee run from the building to a rowboat they had arranged to use previously. Theo rows out them out and shows Kee how to burp he daughter since Kee has never been around a baby before. Kee sees blood in the bottom of the boat and thinks she is bleeding, but Theo calms her and says that it was he that had been shot. As Theo fades out of consciousness, presumably dying, the movie ends with Kee spotting the scientists’ boat.

Even though the plot of the movie was about Theo helping Kee get to the coast the movie was really about hope. How something as small as a baby can bring hope to an entire country and possibly to the world. My review can’t do justice to how good this movie is. It was the best movie I’d seen in a very long time.