rated R 

It can be no coincidence that the words “Department of Homeland Security” are introduced in the third line of “Children of Men.” The clear intention is to immediately set up parallels to our current state of affairs, and to use this association to establish a firm headlock on our extant anxieties and paranoia.

We open on London, the year 2027, as a weepy-eyed crowd gapes at the announcement of the brutal murder of the world’s youngest person—Baby Diego, dead at age 18. With remarkable efficiency, the story immediately describes a world gone barren and propels us into a desperate, doomed atmosphere governed by panic, violence and despair. In the face of incurable worldwide infertility, everything’s come unglued.Turns out, with no future to look to, people will behave very badly. Cities are under siege from within. Bombs are going off. Countries are crumbling. On the bus, we’re shown a public notice that points out, in this world fallen to chaos, “Only Britain soldiers on.” We then see an ad promoting the new home suicide kit. And still, we ride the bus to work. Damn.

The cast is great, but played in maybe too minor a key for such drama. Clive Owen (“Croupier,” “Sin City”), in the lead role as a protester turned petty beaurocrat, mostly only has to glower, drink and, later, dodge bullets. Not a huge stretch for him, really (though he does prove something of a badass with a moving car door). Julianne Moore appears briefly as his ex, who’s become a tough-as-nails resistance leader; Chiwetel Ejiofor is one of her top cronies. Michael Caine is good fun as the aging sidekick future-hippy, but don’t look for any Oscars here—if you can believe it, amidst all the horrors that surround these characters, his story arc (in a direct quote from “Shaun of the Dead”) begins and ends with a fart joke. They all deliver workable performances, but come off as fairly two dimensional against the so-epically rendered backdrop of humanity’s apocalyptic final days.

Writer-director Alphonso Cuaron’s (“Y Tu Mama Tambien,” “Harry Potter III”) “20 minutes in the future” approach may beg immediate comparisons to a number of other notable dystopian nightmares (“Blade Runner” and “Twelve Monkeys” spring to mind), and shares with them a certain density of production design. It’s actually difficult to believe that these are sets we’re looking at. There’s a heady, street-worn realism in the urban scenes—cracked brick walls are layered under by torn and yellowed posters, and everything’s coated by decades of grime and exhaust.  In the countryside, animals are burning in heaps. With no children to populate them, the schools are decaying—useless, forgotten and neglected, they are the first to be reclaimed by nature. The thoroughness and familiarity of detail on display here not only surpasses that of the film’s formidable predecessors, but serves also to draw the audience even deeper into the story, and engage us on a visceral, almost elemental level. It’s been said the most successful movies are the ones that create a dialogue with the audience. It’s the difference between a mature, civilized conversation and simple propaganda.

Although “Children of Men” may subvert itself with wooden performances and an over-reliance on Hollywood convention (a hard-boiled, reluctant hero with a past protects a young woman with a secret from indomitable forces of evil. Pheh! One is tempted to say, haven’t we covered this ground yet a hundred times, and with diminishing returns?), Cuaron’s ability to draw us into his richly layered environment is unparalleled. Watch for some of the longest, most elaborately choreographed single-take tracking shots that you’re likely ever to see.

Here’s a secret of movie making magic: a cut in a film is the editor’s permission for you to blink. No cuts = no blinking.  No blinking = you just can’t look away. It really works. There’s so much happening, and so much to absorb, with no way to look away, and you never know what’s coming next. It very effectively strips us of any sense of control, ratchets the tension to a nearly unbearable degree, and puts us in exactly the freaked out emotional state of the characters on screen. This, folks, is a great conversation.

The term “science fiction” has been pretty liberally bandied around this film, but don’t be fooled. There’s very little science at work here. Its premise is clearly not fact, but that the action happens to be set in the near future hardly qualifies it to be quarantined in the science fiction pen.  This is a sharply observed, disturbingly recognizable reflection of the world we actually live in. It looks at us, into us, and forces us to look harder at our own reflections. If there is, in fact, a science at work here, I’d say it’s most probably psychology.