burrobaggy

It's hard supporting low-budget British filmmakers when they keep on turning out films that just aren't good enough. For every London to Brighton, there are four or five Holding Ons on the shelf because they're not really worth releasing.

It's not all bad. There's a good opening shot craning around a sink estate that promises better to come. But it looks like they blew the whole budget on that and a similar closing shot. Consequently the rest of the film looks like it was shot in a hurry, with some shots having odd sightlines where the actors don't quite seem to be looking in the right place. The plot is very predictable and performances poor. It's possible that the behind the camera team may go on to do better, but next time they need a stronger story and to think how they will film it first.

The hype will kill this film far more effectively than it's quality. It can't live up to it. Is it a bad film? No. Is it a great film? No. It's a good one with some big problems. The first is the script, which is TOO close to Frank Miller to work. You notice how shonky the plotting is, how laughable the dialogue is the moment it is read out aloud. Or in Butler's case, shouted at the top of his lungs. There are no characters, just poses. No-one to root for, no-one to boo. So you're left with the action and the look of the film.

The action is pretty good at first but not quite the great you hope for from the trailer. It's like everything is geared so closely to looking like the comic book that they forgot that means a lot of slowed-down or static shots that get a bit boring. Even more boring is the look of the film. Every shot in the film is washed out and rusty and that gets tired very, very fast. Apart from blood red in the battles that's all you get and you really long for something different just to break it up. It's the most boring use of colour in years. Taken with the animating out of many of the actor's features to touch them up to look more like cartoons it just blands everything out. Even when the singing goat turns up in Xerxes tent it looks a bit ordinary and samey.

So, some good battles but it never flies because everything looks the same and you don't care about anything or anyone that happens. On the Arnie scale, with Terminator being the tops, Total Recall being great, T3 being okay, Raw Deal being weak and Red Sonja being the pits, I'd give this a T3.

Children of Men starts off looking like it'll be a rarity, a good Clive Owen film. It's not that he's suddenly learned to act, just that he's cast as a lifeless drone and that's about within his range. The premise is a bit been there, done that, with another future Britain that's sunk into the twin evils of repressive right wing xenophobia and terrorism, with infertility added into the mix as the raison d'etre. The lack of originality doesn't matter so much since like all "serious" sci-fi it's meant to be a mirror into our own times. What does matter is that the film becomes so predictable around the halfway point. Yes, it's another journey through a not-quite-post-apocalyptic landscape hitting every cliché from the Lazy Screenwriter's Book of Plot Points. Look, here's the ex-girlfriend to remind us of the hero's old idealism. Look, here's the aging hippy to show us how much things have changed. Look, here's the mad army officer to provide some threat. It feels too much like it's ordered from a menu and relies too much on the production design and fake documentary camera-work to sell a TV dinner as a fresh steak.

The film really falls apart in the end because no matter how right Owen is at the start of the film he's every bit as lifeless by the end because displaying emotions or growth just isn't what he does. You don't care about his character, the few amusing star turns get killed off early and you're just left with a big series of explosions and riots and shootings to wake up the audience who've switched off their emotions by then. And that end looks weirdly like a setup for Owen's next movie where he once again plays bodyguard to a baby people want to kill. At least that one looks like it knows what it wants to be, which Children of Men never quite does. Okay, but you've already seen it.