Children of Men - starring Clive Owen

I guess if a film makes you squirm, literally driving you to the edge of your seat, then it's got some merit. And merit is apparent in Clive Owen's most recent movie, Children of Men, which came to DVD last week.

It's set twenty years in our future, in a dsytopian England wracked by terrorism and crime. It seems the world is falling apart - and the reason is a global human infertility, which has rendered the entire population sterile for the last eighteen years.

Faced with the prospect of extinction, society has collapsed. An increasingly fascist government struggles to maintain order. All foriegners have been declared Illegal Immigrants and rounded up into brutal containment camps - the largest at Bexhill on Sea.

The story follows Theo Faron, a disillusioned man slowly drinking himself to death, like most of the population. Only when his ex wife reappears, begging for his help to transport miraculously pregnant Kee to safety, does Theo find a reason to fight against the inevitable.

The film deeply troubled me.

Although it's based on a 1992 novel by P.D. James, this is a post 9/11 film. Global terrorism, pollution, immigration and government brutality are the themes explored in the movie. It's uncomfortable because director Alfonso Cuarón unashamedly inserts his own political opinions.

In P.D. James novel, for example, immigrants were welcomed to Britain. In the movie, all foriegners are rounded up, giving us a heavy headed insight into Alfonso's position on American and British immigration policy.

The Bexhill Refugee camp is clearly modeled on Guantanemo Bay and one brief scene involves an exact reenactment of the infamous Abu Gharib photos.

This strong political element made me deeply uncomfortable.

However I felt about Cuaron's politics, his talants as a filmmaker blew me away. Children of Men is a truly sumptuous film, with every scene bursting with details and richness.

From the streets of London, teeming with smog, to the brutal refugee camp, resembling some Eastern European warzone, the world Cuaron has created comes vividly to life. This is an entirely credible future, not a flashy commercial like the future presented in films such as Minority Report or I, Robot.

Camera and sound blend seamlessly, making you wince as Theo Faron ducks richochets or dodges assailants. I've never felt so immersed in a film before, not even during the opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan.

And the acting is superb. Clive Owen is utterly convincing as the troubled Theo. Micheal Caine plays against type as wonderful hippy Jasper. A host of British character actors (including Chiwetel 'Chewie' Ejiofor, brilliant in 2005's Serenity) give their all and the result is a film that's so intense and rich that you need to take an Alka Seltzer afterwards.

It's a deeply troubling movie, but all the better for it. I think Children of Men is last year's most outstanding film and if you haven't seen it yet, I recommend an immediate trip down to Blockbuster.