Film review: Child 44 - Tom Hardy anchors Soviet-set detective thriller
The title of Child 44 refers to its serial murder plotline but also does a disservice to the story's ambitious scope. Based on Tom Rob Smith's eponymous debut novel, this two-hour-plus odyssey through the Stalin-era Soviet Union blends spy thriller, detective mystery and an Orwellian drama pitching its protagonist against a totalitarian regime.
Starring: Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, Gary Oldman
Director: Daniel Espinosa
Category: IIB
The title of refers to its serial murder plotline but also does a disservice to the story's ambitious scope. Based on Tom Rob Smith's eponymous debut novel, this two-hour-plus odyssey through the Stalin-era Soviet Union blends spy thriller, detective mystery and an Orwellian drama pitching its protagonist against a totalitarian regime.
Also reviewed: Russell Crowe's The Water Diviner
The hero in question is Leo Demidov (Tom Hardy), an orphan who survived the Holodomor in 1933, redeemed himself as a national war hero in 1945 Berlin, and in 1953, goes on to make a very decent living in Moscow as a member of the State Security Force known as the MGB. And he's married to Raisa (Noomi Rapace), a schoolteacher he loves wholeheartedly.
Demidov's reality begins to crack when his godson — the child of his war buddy Alexei (Fares Fares) — is found naked next to some train tracks having been tortured to death. Under the Soviet adage that crimes such as murder are capitalistic diseases with no place in the workers' paradise, Demidov must accept it as an accident or risk being accused of treason.
His belief in the system takes another dent when Raisa ends up on a list of possible spies that Demidov's team has extracted. Refusing to denounce his newly pregnant wife, Demidov is instead stripped of his rank and sent to the impoverished city of Volsk to work for the deviant local police chief General Nesterov (Gary Oldman).
Upon discovering that a shocking number of boys have been murdered with similarly surgical precision in the area, Demidov awakens the conscience of Nesterov and sneaks back to Moscow with Raisa to further investigate Alexei's account — a dangerously stupid move for the pair but inevitable for any self-respecting murder mystery.
Although he plays an MGB officer who's presumably used to identifying ideological crimes, Hardy's character looks like an honourable idealist next to the film's cartoon villains, including Joel Kinnaman as Vasili, a sadistic colleague who holds a deadly if inexplicable grudge.
Also reviewed: Hong Kong thriller Angel Whispers
Competently adapted by Daniel Espinosa, the Swedish filmmaker who made his US debut with 2012's conspiracy thriller , is a densely plotted film that seems more engaged with its human drama than the detective work.
Hardy and Rapace provide a solid emotional anchor as a couple brought together by fear and tightened by survival instinct, before finding resolution after escaping the identities given them by historical situations.
may see Hardy — also attached to star in three more films following next month's — become a rising force in blockbuster franchises.
