London is on the edge of anarchy and a bleak, palid countryside is ruled by a totalitarian military regime hunting down rebels and terrorist factions.
Because of massive pollution, no woman can conceive, and mankind is threatened with eventual extinction. Immigrants from even more broken societies abroad are locked up in a huge camp on the South Coast.
No depiction of a dystopian future has looked better than Alfonso Cuarón's scarred version of a devastated England 20 years hence. Visually, Children of Men is a totally convincing adaptation of the P D James novel on which it is based.
The book is more than an awful warning about what might happen if we don't mend our ways. It contains religious metaphors and symbolism, and an assessment of why we have come to this pass - which the film merely hints at. It's more like a thoughtful action movie than a film with real resonance.
Theodore, the principal character, played by Clive Owen, is a bureaucrat, as was James herself, and a former activist stunned by his situation. He is shaken from inertia by the fact that a young woman (the excellent Claire-Hope Ashitey) is miraculously-discovered pregnant.
He is offered £5,000 to help save her and begins to feel that he should do so for better reasons than money. If he doesn't, she will fall into the hands of those who will never allow the birth to go ahead without demanding absolute control of the child. So his odyssey begins.
He finds himself accompanying the pregnant woman and a band of activists, led by his former lover (Julianne Moore), on a treacherous journey past both security checkpoints and armed terrorists towards the coast where members of the Human Project, a group of intellectuals working for a new society, are prepared to help.
Owen's performance, light years away from his more glamorous image, is fine. But the writing of his part is too bald to be entirely convincing and we consistently want to know more than Cuarón gives us. There are few quiet moments in the film which might have allowed us to the space to think.
A bearded Michael Caine appears as a veteran hippie who remembers better times and, if this borders on parody, there is Peter Mullan, highly effective in a small role as a sympathetic soldier.
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The film's main strength is its cinematic depiction of a desperate world with considerable visual and kinetic skill. But, as often happens, a lavish production sometimes drowns out the subtleties of. the more thoughtful book upon which it is based.
Children Of Men
Cert: 15
