Children of Men

Rare occurrence - we went to the theater and saw a really excellent movie. The premise is that the entire world lost fertility in 2009. The movie is set in Britain in 2027, by which time the absence of children has been felt around the world in similar ways. Basically, people have given up hope - they see no future. Riots, destruction, "the end is near" behavior. Britain "soldiers on" and is seen as a relatively safer haven; thus, it is swamped with immigrants. Britain responds by agressively rounding up, and deporting, illegal immigrants. You can read about the lead characters and the plot in reviews such as this one. A former activist becomes a bureaucrat; he ends up sheperding a pregnant woman (pregnancy being a miracle) to a safe haven while fending off a terrorist group and police.

It was just excellent. There was a chase scene where a car is rapidly reversing down a road while trying to evade motorcyclists; I still can't figure out how they filmed it. Near the end, the lead actor is escorting the pregnant woman out of a building where the terrorist group has holed up and the army is shelling with tanks etc. This definitely was the best scene in the movie. Thoughts: 1) It reminded me of the Stalingrad book - great filming of fighting that goes beyond floor-to-floor urban fighting, it's literally room to room. 2) Again, there was something unique about the filming - it was like a single camera following the action, something like you would think a film crew embedded with the military would do. 3) The scene where he walks out with the woman through the terrorists and then through the military - the identical reactions of the fighters - this is really well done.

Chris, Patrick and Paul Jr. accompanied Patricia and me. Then we had dinner at Elephant Bar. (Where the service didn't measure up to the movie.) But it was a fine outing.