If you are a Scrooge feeling bitter and lonely today, boy, have I got a movie for you.
For reasons that escape me, the good folks at Universal Pictures have chosen to release a deadly black futuristic thriller about post-apocalyptic dystopia today on the birthday of the baby Jesus.
Merry Christmas, everybody!
“Children of Men” is all the more effectively tense and terrifying — as directed by Alfonso Cuaron (“Y Tu Mama Tambien,” “A Little Princess”) — because it imagines a gruesome near-future that could plausibly come to pass.
Set in Britain in the year 2027, this adaptation of the P.D. James book posits that most of the world as we knew it has been destroyed by anarchy, nukes and an ensuing blight on humanity’s ability to reproduce itself. No new children have been born anywhere on the planet in nearly two decades.
Adding to the horror of the epidemic infertility, Britain has become a fascist state to try and retain order as the last great power to have survived. It’s overrun by illegal immigrant refugees — called “fugees” — and the effort to contain them has created a hell where anti-government rebels called Fishes blow up random coffee houses and suicide is a state-sanctioned, mass-marketed lifestyle choice.
Because his radical ex (Julianne Moore) is the head of the Fishes and he has certain important contacts, an unassuming government bureaucrat named Theo (Clive Owen at his intense and brawny best) ends up being dragged into the escape scheme for a very special fugee named Kee (Claire-Hope Ashitey). Kee holds an amazing secret in her womb that might save the entire human race. Despite his own resignation to the mayhem that has been going on around him until now, Theo finds hope in Kee’s struggle. He enlists the help of his aging hippie friend Jasper (a witty and compelling Michael Caine) and tries to defeat the forces on both sides of the country’s political struggles who threaten Kee and her miracle baby.
Come to think of it, given the movie’s baby-as-savior theme, maybe “Children of Men” is appropriate yuletide entertainment for people who want a little reality check and dark meat as a side order to their holly and ho-ho-ho.
But if you’d rather turn your brain off and just tap your toes to celebrate the nativity, today’s release of “Dreamgirls” is a better choice.
‘Children of Men’
Stars: Clive Owen, Julianne Moore and Michael Caine
Director: Alfonso Cuaron
Rated: R for strong violence, language, some drug use and brief nudity
