Children of Men Review

The long takes are not showing off, they are the argument. Lubezki's car ambush and the Bexhill assault each run for minutes without a visible cut, using rigged vehicles and hidden stitches, and the effect is to deny the audience the escape of a cutaway. Blood on the lens stays on the lens. Cuaron builds his near-future Britain almost entirely in the background of frames, letting propaganda screens, livestock pens and refugee transports pass by unexplained, which is far more convincing world-building than any expository briefing.

Clive Owen is well used as an exhausted ordinary man rather than a hero, and Michael Caine's aging hippie supplies the only warmth. The problems are in the script. Characters exist to be killed on schedule, the militant faction turns villainous on a dime, the premise is never interrogated beyond its symbolism, and the dialogue is mostly functional shouting between set pieces. As pure filmmaking it is a landmark. As a story it is considerably slighter than the technique that carries it.