Moving swiftly onwards

Well, it's very obvious of me to f0llow up an easy peasy review of something that sucked balls with a review of something I liked: but what about something that both contains actors I hate and is kind of like one of those flicks I really, really didn't want to like at all?

Well, Clive Owen is a Ballbag, and Jullianne Moore is just irritating for some reason (but okay, I have seen more than one movie I like her in) - plus any synopsis I read of children of men just made me want to Gag.

Yet I genuinely thought this was a good movie: even rarer, a good science fiction movie. As a big big SF fan I am more than willing to acknowledge that most every time SF lays its hands on a grownup plot it just fumbles and dies like a dungeon master at an FTV party. Nope, not this time.

On a tight budget and with a plot that - let's face it - could have been so ropy, Children Of Men actually manages to be involving and affecting: and it has one of the best one-minute intros in years, immediately making you want to know more as a crowd of bleak londoners observe the rolling news announcements of the death of "the youngest person in the world" in a dirty, nasty, rickshaw-filled oxford street. 

The rock solid rules of SF dystopia are not flouted in this movie. Yes we have the quirky crackpot pal (nice wig, Michael Caine... or is it?) and the 'resistance' and a raft of things that could just be ballsed up so badly... but the film keeps moving fast enough, has no problems with shooting major characters in the neck, and most importantly does not attempt to make anyone feel better at any point or at the end.

Good work, people.

Britain hasn't been this scary since The Quatermass Conclusion (okay I was secen years old at the time) and the main thing that the excellently realised dystopia makes you think is "hey - shouldn't there be more movies like this lying about the place, seeing as peak oil, the supposed clash of cultures, all of that are so current?" 

Fans of dystopia shouldn't miss. Okay, it likes its hokey visual setups, and it likes its strongly underlined political messages but jesus... iRobot it is *not*. 

More of this, please. Eight and a half armed immigration policemen.