Children of Men: Critic Reviews

Thrilling, important, and invigoratingly bleak, Children of Men is one of the very best movies to come out in 2006.

Children of Men, the superbly directed political thriller by Alfonso Cuarón, may be something of a bummer, but its the kind of glorious bummer that lifts you to the rafters.

This explosively violent future-nightmare thriller, directed by Alfonso Cuaron and adapted from the novel by PD James, has simply the most extraordinary look of any movie around.

An exhilarating sci-fi action thriller with a powerful social and political message.

An audacious, exhilarating futuristic thriller.

This is an extraordinary artistic breakthrough from a Mexican director who was already fearlessly good to begin with.

It's a measure of Cuaron's directorial chops that Children of Men functions equally well as fantasy and thriller.

Cuaron relies on his ample visual style, and he has indeed created a film you cannot tear your eyes away from.

Bloated adaptation of P.D. James's thoughtful, compact novel.

Cuaron does lowdown takes on high concept better than anyone; no matter what genre he touches, he brings grit and loose-limbed humor along with the hand-held camera jangles.

The story is strong enough, but it's the atmosphere, thick with matter-of-fact doom and guerrilla warfare, that gives the film its quickened pulse.

Based on a novel by British mystery writer P.D. James, Children of Men is a filmmaking feat. In the midst of mayhem, director Alfonso Cuaron delivers subtle and jarring images, while exploring complex emotional rhythms.

It's a wow.

Even if you don't buy the main conceit, the scumbled texture of the movie makes it feel not just plausible but recognizable, and Cuaron takes care never to paint the future as consolingly different.

Cuaron fulfills the promise of futuristic fiction; characters do not wear strange costumes or visit the moon, and the cities are not plastic hallucinations, but look just like today, except tired and shabby.

Outside of Black Christmas -- and aren't we all planning on staying outside of Black Christmas? -- this is probably the feel-not-so-great movie of the holiday season. But if you're in the proper, semi-dark mood, it's a gritty gem.

Is Children of Men for everyone? I don't know. I haven't asked everyone. I can only say it was for me, and that I found its vision of the future gripping--and hopeful, ultimately.

The film gradually devolves into action-adventure, then the equivalent of a war movie. But the filmmaking is pungent throughout, and the first half hour is so jaw-dropping in its fleshed-out extrapolation that Cuaron earns the right to coast a bit.

[A] dark, terrifying and sometimes very funny film.

Cuaron also pulls us deep into the engrossing universe he has created. There is a stark absence of gadget porn in this futuristic adventure; the most advanced device we see is a video game, innovation at its most trivial.

Darkly poetic throughout, the film starts with an explosion and ends drifting in fog with no clear resolution in sight. How brave and oddly satisfying.

Everything comes together in Children of Men, from Owen's white-knuckled performance to the eclectic soundtrack.

What I find particularly irksome about it is its pseudo-humanism and its calculating political correctness.

A fine but flawed exercise in dystopia.

The story, based on P.D. James' novel, grabs you at first, but its grip slackens as the unanswered questions and murky plot developments add up.