Children of Men

Adventure, Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Clive Owen	Theo Faron
Julianne Moore
Michael Caine	Jasper Palmer
Chiwetel Ejiofor
Charlie Hunnam	Patric
Juan Gabriel Yacuzzi	Baby Diego
Michelle Hussain	Newsreader
Rob Curling	Newsreader
Jon Chevalier	Café Customer
Rita Davies	Café Customer
Kim Fenton	Café Customer
Chris Gilbert	Café Customer
Phoebe Hawthorne	Café Customer
Rebecca Howard	Café Customer
Atalanta White	Café Customer
Laurence Woodbridge	Café Customer
Maria McErlane	Shirley
Michael Haughey	Mr. Griffiths
Paul Sharma	Ian
Miriam Karlin	Caged German Grandmother
Philippa Urquhart	Janice
Tehmina Sunny	Zara

Director	Alfonso Cuarón
Producer	Marc Abraham; Armyan Bernstein; Hilary Shor
Writer	Alfonso Cuarón; Timothy J. Sexton; David Arata

Presenting a bleak, harrowing, and yet ultimately hopeful vision of humankind's not-too-distant future, Children of Men is a riveting cautionary tale of potential things to come. Set in the crisis-ravaged future of 2027, and based on the atypical 1993 novel by British mystery writer P.D. James, the anxiety-inducing, action-packed story is set in a dystopian England where humanity has become infertile (the last baby was born in 2009), immigration is a crime, refugees (or "fugees") are caged like animals, and the world has been torn apart by nuclear fallout, rampant terrorism, and political rebellion. In this seemingly hopeless landscape of hardscrabble survival, a jaded bureaucrat named Theo (Clive Owen) is drawn into a desperate struggle to deliver Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey), the world's only pregnant woman, to a secret group called the Human Project that hopes to discover a cure for global infertility. As they carefully navigate between the battling forces of military police and a pro-immigration insurgency, Theo, Kee, and their secretive allies endure a death-defying ordeal of urban warfare, and director Alfonso Cuaron (with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki) capture the action with you-are-there intensity. There's just enough humor to balance the film's darker content (much of it coming from Michael Caine, as Theo's aging hippie cohort), and although Children of Men glosses over many of the specifics about its sociopolitical worst-case scenario (which includes Julianne Moore in a brief but pivotal role), it's still an immensely satisfying, pulse-pounding vision of a future that represents a frightening extrapolation of early 21st-century history. --Jeff Shannon