Quite possibly the best Science Fiction film in years.

because, lets face it - Science fiction is a much maligned, much abused genre. Exploding spaceships, comedy robot sidekicks, laser guns, that sort of thing, especially in the 80s. After all, from the glory years of the hard sci-fi of the 70s (think Colussus, (aka The Forbin project), the Andromeda Strain, the Omega Man), sci-fi has never really recaptured that dystopian realism.  Its very rare you find a science fiction that feels real, a real breathing world, one like our own. Until now that is – because Children of men is a science fiction film set in our world, just like the world we live in, but different.

The premise is quite simple – The future is a thing of the past ; mankind is dying out, there hasn’t been a child born in the world in 20 years, and life is just a clock ticking down to our inevitable extinction. With nothing left to live for, the world is falling apart. The verge of anarchy is controlled only with brutal violence and a hardline totalitarian regime which rules by propaganda and sheer bloody force. And as one of the characters says “I can't really remember when I last had any hope, and I certainly can't remember when anyone else did either. Because really, since women stopped being able to have babies, what's left to hope for?”

It really is the total antithesis of the megabudget Hollywood rubbish we see everyday. After all, if Michael Bay had shot it, it would be set in the blazing California sunshine, green green grass and with flying hoverbikes. Not this – the oil pipelines burn, people die senselessly and brutally in a bitter struggle over the remaining few prizes. Adverts constantly beam out about how to choose your own time to die, about how Illegal immigrants should be contained, whilst Troops ransack houses at gunpoint and keep people in cages; people commute to work in buses with Iron bars on the windows to deflect the thrown molotovs, coffee shops explode and the anarchists get blamed, and hope slowly, relentlessly, ceaselessy fades and dies. Suddenly the glory of the 2012 London Olympics seems like a far cry of the the past – and the fact that Theo (Clive Owen) spends the last half of the film wearing a grubby 2012 Olympics fleece is a telling sign of just how close the attention to detail is.

Newspaper headlines tell us about when Russia invaded Kazakstan, TV news programmes show us the list of cities gone and lost in the chaos of war, like the time of the nuclear mushroom cloud over New York , about the death of the worlds youngest person; about how Battersea Power station is renovated as a cultural museum to the art of mankind, restored with a floating pig hovering over the towers, about mankind celebrating its glory in its last few hopeless days . Chinooks fly over the exile of Bexhill-on-sea ; a very English Guantanamo bay, where the illegal immigrants are kept exiled away to fend for themselves at gunpoint, and the oil pipelines burn into the darkened sky.after all, there’s no future to save is there?

And then there is hope. A single pregnant woman, on the run; the seed from which mankind can be reborn. Rivals clash and factions play with the glory while the entire future of the world holds in the balance. And all along the clock is ticking, and Theo takes on the mantle as the only man that the mother to be of mankinds last, best hope for a future trusts. While every one else schemes and plots and life is lost, the only life that matters is that which he protects.

Children of Men is incredibly realised, and rich in detail, features a stunning action scene at the end, an uninterrupted five minute saving private ryan-esque one shot scene of desolation and destruction as an unprotected, unarmed Theo dashes through a full on military assault. Its like a science fiction film without the flash, without the sleek slick shiny future we hoped for. Its like today, but worse. It feels like a throwback to a day when science fiction actually tried to say something, not just sell us action figures and toy merchandising. Think the Andromeda Strain, Day of the Triffids, V for Vendetta (of which the totalitarian vision of England owes a certain debt) , Twelve Monkeys. Think The omega Man, 1984, Brazil, 28 days later; think Solaris and the great literary classic “I am Legend” (currently being bastardised by Will Smith). Think the kind of the intelligent, daring sci-fi films you haven’t seen in twenty five years, the kind of which you didn’t think Hollywood had the balls to do anymore.

They’ll hate it in Texas. It’ll tank in America. But don’t let that bother you. After all, does anyone remmber that Uncle Buck trounced the Abyss at the box office? Does anyone remember that fight club was deemed such a flop that it cost the head of the studio his job and was widely deemed a failure? Or do people still talk about love those films now?

People will remember Children of Men long into the future. Long after the likes of Tallegeda Nights, Xmen3, and Fast And Furious: Tokyo Drift have disappeared into oblivion, Children of men will remain.  If only all Science fiction was this good.

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