He escapes from a terrorist bombing at his local coffee shop by mere seconds, and he passes immigrants being rounded up like dogs with unemotional callousness. Then he gets kidnapped by a renegade terrorist group that is run by his ex-wife, Julian (Moore). He is coaxed into helping them smuggle a young girl to a safe haven because the girl, named Kee (Ashitey), is pregnant.

Theo solicits help from a hermitlike hippie friend named Jasper (Caine), who lives in a reclusive countryside home and grows his own flavored marijuana. The rogue activists who have joined with Julian include a wild trigger-happy Patric (Hunnam) and an over-eager Luke (Ejiofor). Julian tells Theo to trust no one.

Theo finds himself seeking refuge at an immigrant camp not unlike a World War II concentration camp, and he tries to hide Kee's pregnancy, but she starts going into labor. Theo becomes not only a reluctant hero but an even more reluctant midwife. The problem he faces is how to save this new child—and new hope for the future that is born into a world of turmoil.

Teach your parents well

Director Alfonso Cuarón's magical and subdued imprint is all over this film and the script. The look of the world of the future is subtle yet bizarre. Zoo animals have become personal exotic pets being walked through Hyde Park. Cars seem vaguely familiar until you realize that there are no such makes, and there are very few of them around two decades from now. There are mentions of Homeland Security and other issues of today, which become warnings for the parents of today, not the children of the future.

Like even some of his children's films, such as Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and A Little Princess, this is a story devoid of sentimentality in every way. Neither the little old ladies begging in the street, nor the parakeets kept in cages while gunfire is all around, nor even the baby crying among bomb blasts gets any sympathy or compassion. That is the future landscape painted by Cuarón and the handful of other writers who've had their hands in adapting the dark novel by British mystery writer P.D. James.

The film is almost anti-SF. It seeks to familiarize the future rather than depict any differences, and it overshadows any explanations or super-science theories of what has caused the mass infertility of the human race. That gives the film a bit of a retro feel, especially in the scenes with two-time Academy Award winner Caine as the futuristic hippie who likes pull-my-finger fart gags. It's as if John Lennon had lived and grown older in the countryside of England, and it turns out that is how Caine played it.

Oscar-nominated Owen and Moore are fine in their roles, but it's the new talent of Ashitey that shines. She plays her role at first with arrogant defiance, then helplessness and fear. She's truly an actress to watch. The birth of a new baby to a woman who doesn't know the father has a particular significance because the film is opening on Christmas Day, but Cuarón warns not to read too much into that. He says the film is more of a commentary on what is going on today: issues of immigration, environment and disease rather than any spiritual message.

The battlefield scenes are gut-wrenching and gritty. It might be fun to know some of the secrets of the filming, such as one scene in which Theo and Kee run through the streets while getting shot at. The camera gets fake blood splattered on it, and the scene keeps going without anyone wiping the lens clean. Cuarón kept the shot as is, feeling it added dramatic effect, which it does. And, it was the one and only take of that complex scene. Also, as realistic and graphic as it may seem, the baby that is born in the film is completely animatronic.