Children of Men

We had a screening of Children of Men today at work, which is nothing short of amazing. The setting reveals a brutal near future (2029) in which the entire human race has mysteriously been rendered infertile for 18 years with no end in sight, deteriorating into a violent chaos in the face of its inevitable expiration. Well-directed and shot action drama surrounding a single discovered pregnant woman ensues.

The brilliance of the film, however, is that it is ultimately a look at human nature confronting hopelessness; the infertility crisis could easily be replaced with a more plausible worldwide scarcity of resources like food or clean water, in which wealthy military powers like Britain and the U.S. would become pillars of survival. Finding its way through refugee camp sets that strongly resemble the war images we see coming out of Iraq today, the "sci-fi" world you're watching becomes intensely, frighteningly real, which makes the emergence of all sorts of characters (optimists, power-seekers, heroes, or potheads) extremely compelling.

Please, please don't let this movie bomb like 12 Monkeys...