I didn’t seem to mind the violence, because it was all “in keeping”. I usually find thrillers decidedly unthrilling, and I hate “action” films, but here I was genuinely on the edge of my seat for most of the film. I think a big part of that came from killing off Julianne Moore so early on – I’d expected her to last most of the film and was quite shocked when she didn’t. It got rid of the aura of invincibility around main characters which is my usual complaint about thrillers/ action films.

Most dystopian films succeed in portraying one thing or another, but I think this one really captured something, if that makes any sense. I found it shockingly easy to believe in the world Cuaron painted – unlike bladerunner, which was entertaining, but never struck me as remotely plausible.
It would have been so easy to overegg the futuristic CG pudding, so to speak, and I’m so glad they resisted that temptation. I suspect there were places when it must have been used, but I only thought about those after wards, since it simply blended into the live action, which is what I have always assumed CG was meant to be.
Plus, it really is an amazingly simple (and brilliant) concept – all credit to PD James. I was thinking about it all last night and then again this morning!

_{and how can you say it was depressing?! There was hope, surely, at the end?}