Ok. There are two broad things I didn’t like. The first is that the plot is highly formulaic. I reckon that from the first time we see Julian, it is possible to predict every major plot point from that time all the way to the end of the movie. So then it’s just a matter of when and precisely how the various things will happen. Like obviously he’s going to get drawn into the rebel group, and obviously they’ll have a pregnant woman that he need to protect, and obviously there is going to be a betrayal, and obviously the people closest to him are going to die, and obviously the child will be seen as beacon of hope - etc. Its like the movie is made by snapping together a selection of off-the-shelf general-purpose tropes.

And the second thing I disliked is that several of the conversations seem like they are performed for the viewer rather than for the characters. For example, early in the movie in the car when they are discussing treatment of refugees… It reflected their views and situation pretty well to the viewer, but it made it sound like they’d barely discussed it with each other before - which I did not find plausible. I think ‘real’ people in that circumstance would already be very familiar with the situation and with each others opinion on the situation - and so the the conversation would be different. Another similar example is near the end, talking about when the miscarriages started in the hospital. It sounds like a sharing of an powerful experience, new information, very heart-felt. But it seems to me that since those events were 18 years ago, and were of critical importance to everyone on the planet, I think everyone would have been highly familiar with that kind of account. It would not be a new sharing of information. It would be an extremely well know sequence of events; and so the conversation should have been different. (And at the end, they made a comment about it beings strange living in a world without the sound of children… like, ‘no shit’ - is that a novel thought? After 18 years? It just didn’t feel real to me.)

One other particular scene I disliked was when Jasper sacrificed himself to let the others escape. I just could not believe that Theo et. al would just stand on the hill in plain sight of their pursuers, while Jasper obviously was ready to give his life to allow them to escape. They made no effort to stay hidden or anything. They’re just standing there watching, while their friend gives up his life to protect them and the one hope for humanity… a simple glance from any of the baddies could spell their doom, but they just stand and watch. Like… what the hell are they doing? I feel like the reason they stayed is that so the movie could show the death and their reaction, and avoid having to jump between different characters’ view points. And Jasper starts doing the ‘pull my finger’ thing… which I feel they only did because that kind of thing is basically the only characteristic the movie had managed to build up for Jasper that they could use as an emotional lever…

By contrast, today I watched Das Boot. Which is a much older and less flashy movie. But in Das Boot, the characters only say things that are realistic conversations for people in that situation. And the plot was not so easy to predict, because since it was not a message of hope or anything like that, it was much harder to guess how it might end. And if you aren’t watching the running-time, this makes certain action scenes fair more intense - because they could very well be the end of the movie. There is no ‘plot armour’ for these characters. So… for me, Das Boot is better than Children of Men. (The movies are very different. The only reason I’m comparing them is that I happened to watch them in succession and I thought it might be useful to help illustrate what I was talking about above.)