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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Children of Men

Universal acclaim
Based on 38 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 478 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Adventure | Drama | Sci-fi | Suspense/Thriller
Written by:
Alfonso Cuarón, Timothy J. Sexton, David Arata, Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby
P.D. James (novel The Children of Men)
Directed by: Alfonso Cuarón
Release Date:
Theatrical: December 25, 2006
DVD: March 27, 2007
Running Time: 109 minutes, Color
Origin: UK / USA
Summary
RATING: R for strong violence, language, some drug use and brief nudity
Starring Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Michael Caine, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Charlie Hunnam, Claire-Hope Ashitey, Pam Ferris, and Danny Huston
Children of Men envisages a world one generation from now that has fallen into anarchy on the heels of an infertility defect in the population. The world's youngest citizen has just died at 18, and humankind is facing the likelihood of its own extinction. Set against the backdrop of London torn apart by violence and nationalistic sects, the film follows disillusioned bureaucrat Theo (Owen) as he becomes an unlikely champion of Earth's survival. (Universal Pictures)
Also On Metacritic
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Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
Made with palpable energy, intensity and excitement, it compellingly creates a world gone mad that is uncomfortably close to the one we live in. It is a "Blade Runner" for the 21st century, a worthy successor to that epic of dystopian decay
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps
It's a heartbreaking, bullet-strewn valentine to what keeps us human.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
Children of Men is a nativity story for the ages, this or any other.
Read Full Review >Slate Dana Stevens
I don't just mean it's one of the best movies of the past six years. Children of Men, based on the 1992 novel by P.D. James, is the movie of the millennium because it's about our millennium, with its fractured, fearful politics and random bursts of violence and terror.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Manohla Dargis
Children of Men may be something of a bummer, but it’s the kind of glorious bummer that lifts you to the rafters, transporting you with the greatness of its filmmaking.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Ann Hornaday
Working with his longtime cinematographer Emmanuel "Chivo" Lubezki, Cuaron creates the most deeply imagined and fully realized world to be seen on screen this year, not to mention bravura sequences that bring to mind names like Orson Welles and Stanley Kubrick.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
This is an extraordinary artistic breakthrough from a Mexican director who was already fearlessly good to begin with.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Peter Hartlaub
Children of Men is Cuarón's run for freedom, with a riveting story, fantastic action scenes and acting so universally solid that even the dogs perform masterfully under his direction.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
It's a work of art that deserves a space cleared for its angry, nervous beauty.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
At times the film is so supercharged that it glosses over the story's thematic richness and turns into a very high-grade action picture. But if that's the worst thing you can say about a movie, you're doing all right. The best thing to be said about Children of Men is that it's a fully imagined vision of dystopia.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
The performances are crucial, because all of these characters have so completely internalized their world that they make it palpable, and themselves utterly convincing.
Read Full Review >Village Voice J. Hoberman
It's a measure of Cuarón's directorial chops that Children of Men functions equally well as fantasy and thriller. Like Spielberg's "War of the Worlds" and the Wachowski Brothers' "V for Vendetta" (and more consistently than either), the movie attempts to fuse contemporary life with pulp mythology.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Scott Foundas
One of the year's most imaginative and uniquely exciting pieces of cinema.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
It is that rare futuristic thriller: grim in its scenario, yet exhilarating in its technique.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
It depicts a world close enough to our own to be terrifying, yet different enough to rouse curiosity.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
Children of Men is thrilling, both for its groundbreaking style (there are action sequences here unlike any filmed before) and its complex, vividly realized ideas.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
A chase movie, a spy movie, a futuristic thriller full of colorfully bizarre characters and deftly choreographed stunt work, Children of Men works on multiple levels - as action and allegory.
Read Full Review >Premiere Stephen Saito
It's the rare sci-fi film that transcends its genre with its ideas, able to sweep one up in its not-too-distant future and yet remain remarkably prescient about the present day.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Cuarón has a gift only the greatest filmmakers share: He makes you believe.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine David Edelstein
Children of Men is a bouillabaisse of up-to-the-minute terrors. It's a wow, though.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker Anthony Lane
It's a film that you need to see, not a film that you especially want to.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
A solemn, haunting picture, but it's also a thrilling one, partly because of the sheer bravado with which it's made. It left me feeling more fortified than drained. Cuarón, the most openhearted of directors, prefers to give rather than take away.
Read Full Review >Variety Derek Elley
Picture more than delivers on the action front -- not in bang-for-your-buck spectacle but in the kind of gritty, doculike sequences that haul viewers out of their seats and alongside the main protags.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Ray Bennett
Owen carries the film more in the tradition of a Jimmy Stewart or Henry Fonda than a Clint Eastwood or Harrison Ford. He has to wear flip-flops for part of the time without losing his dignity, and he never reaches for a weapon or guns anyone down. Cuaron and Owen may have created the first believable 21st-century movie hero.
Read Full Review >Empire Damon Wise
A visually stunning Swiftian satire, Children Of Men may appear clumsy, but its message is simple, heartfelt and ultimately rather moving.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
As all his films have shown, Cuarón is clearly one of the most original filmmakers working today, and Children of Men should solidify his place at the top of those ranks. With a great script, there should be no stopping him.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
Children of Men has some magnificent moments of moviemaking and is thoroughly infused with just the atmosphere Cuaron has aimed for. But it's so streamlined in its storytelling and unvarying in its tone that it's more deadening than transporting.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
Although imperfect, it's engaging, thought-provoking stuff.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
An exhilarating sci-fi action thriller with a powerful social and political message.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
Cuarón relies on his ample visual style, and he has indeed created a film you cannot tear your eyes away from.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
The screenplay, which differs significantly from the novel, is uneven, but the distorted mirror it holds up to the present is disturbingly clear.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Mark Bell
The problem with the film, despite the genius of craftmanship and cinematography, is that the film doesn't really have anything new to say.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
The film gradually devolves into action-adventure, then the equivalent of a war movie. But the filmmaking is pungent throughout, and the first half hour is so jaw-dropping in its fleshed-out extrapolation that Cuaron earns the right to coast a bit.
Read Full Review >Newsweek David Ansen
Children of Men leaves too many questions unanswered, yet it has a stunning visceral impact. You can forgive a lot in the face of filmmaking this dazzling.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach
As great as the film looks, the story, adapted from a novel by P.D. James, never quite comes into focus.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
As exciting and disturbing as it is in many ways, Children of Men -- based on a novel by P.D. James -- doesn't add up to a credible alternate view of the near-future: Its vision hasn't been well thought out, and, again and again, it struck me as a sloppy piece of storytelling.
Read Full Review >New York Post Kyle Smith
Director Alfonso Cuarón has a vision so mesmerizingly terrible that it alone - at least, for those who enjoy a gorgeous nightmare - is reason enough to see the film.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
Bloated adaptation of P.D. James's thoughtful, compact novel.
What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.6 (out of 10) based on 478 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Levente S gave it a1:
Children of Men suffers from what has been called 'middle child' syndrome, the illness where something is conceived with no real beginning and no real end. It is never explained why nobody can have babies, it is never explained how the girl got pregnant, it is never revealed what happens to the girl and we never find out if our species goes extinct or if she was just a fluke. The characters are one-dimensional, the action is boring, the story is dross, and the science is simply preposterous. The only good things about this movie were the powerful emotions conjured by the school, and Michael Caine's stellar performance. Other than that, though, Children of Men should have been aborted.
Ben H gave it a3:
Great filming.. but poorly developed characters, a complete lack of direction, point or cohesion and heaps of mindless violence and ugliness add up to equal the same old crap we've been shoveled for the last 30 years.
Russell J. gave it a10:
This film is fantastic. The dystopian future that Clive Owen's character Theo has to live in is believable and grim. Theo lives in a future where women are all infertile and the youngest person is 18 and has just been killed. Theo is understandably cynical and bordering on alcoholic. His true friend being an hippy played my Michael Caine. Hope is rekindled in Theo when he is introduced by his ex-wife to a young girl who is pregnant and needs them to take her to a rendezvous point. The film is about Theo's journey and his realisation that he is playing a part in something which is much bigger than him. The concept and vision of a world without children is a scary prospect and is something I never thought about until I watched this film. There are criticisms I have heard from friends. The first is the film doesn't explain why this infertility epidemic arose. My opinion on this is that it reflects real life, no one knows how Aids originated for instance. The second criticism is the low key ending which I personally love, I love the ambiguity of this ending which imbues the nature of sacrifice and your own pessimism or optimism will determine whether that was in vain.
R. Lopez gave it a10:
I was wandering in a DVD shop one day just looking for something to buy, anything that looked interesting and I came across Children of Men, at first I wasn't really interested in it so I went on to look for something else, but amazingly something compelled me to buy this movie. And I did, and now I'm glad I did Children of Men does what most dystpoia sci-fi adventures rarely do, they tell a story that all of us can relate to in someway or another. Children of Men stars Clive Owen as Theo Faron a disillusioned bureaucrat who has been tasked with the sole duty of escorting and protecting the first pregnant woman in 18 years to the Human Projects so they can utilize her pregnancy to fix the fertility problem with the world. It's a heart pounding & mind blowing visual race to get out of England before the government catches them and use the poor girls baby for publicity and to acquire money to fiance there war with the rebels. Children of Men is a heart wrenching film that deserves to be called one of the greatest modern Science Fiction films ever made. I very highly recommend this amazing film.
Rob V gave it a10:
Concerning Sibyl P's blind attempts to hurt this movies reputation, it wasn't about violence. It was about the hope new life brings in a world doomed by a fate of infertility. The scene when the man walks through a war zone carrying the baby which was born not more then a few hours ago, when everyone just stopped and looked at the child... That's what the movie was about. The death was the back drop of a world without meaning. That child gave it meaning. That's why the movie was so great.
Phil M. gave it a10:
I've never seen violence filmed so well before. It feels like you're watching footage, and not film. The use of less cuts and more one-shot "following behind the protagonist" and using less action music to create a more intense effect. I also like how the characters are genuinely fearing for their lives when under violence. The environments look the part beautifully. Very immersive film.
Sibyl P gave it a3:
The cinematography, the art direction, are interesting, the cast is good except for Miriam and Kee (not so much), but all have been put to the service of a bogus vision. What the heck is the point? Infertility is hardly a problem in the real world. Overpopulation is more of a problem. In “Children of Men,” everyone is killing everyone. That’s just stupid. London, New York, most of the civilized world, has very little crime. This director tries to make us believe that London could be a violent place where there is rape, murder, famine, cruelty, corruption, inhumanity, and chauvinism, as the norm. Well, it’s not. This movie is largely lies. Don’t fall for it. And the story goes nowhere. No interesting questions are answered. The film is not interested in truth, but only distortion and violence.
