Child 44 (2015)

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

The movie is wildly uneven but lively and timely - in its own surreal way

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

Yeap. Its THAT WEIRD.But even if that "makes it bad" by definition, all the scenes and segments and sequences are well done, in my opinion. Some better than others, of course.Maybe I just like Tom Hardy that much, but I though it was a good movie, overall, if you can forgive the fact that it jumps from genre to genre (quite clearly, actually). I can do that, do you?

The intensity of this movie is really gripping - first it sets the scene really well in post WW2 Russia - then it evolves into a murder mystery story. It does both really well and its helped by an incredible cast including Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman & the awesome Joel Kinnaman playing a cretinous bad guy. This film is very involving and it does well to set out the "feel" of what Russia must have been like then.

Beautifully and efficiently told story of a couple living in post war socialist Ukraine, trying to live normal lives when all lives are controlled by 'the state'. Daily life constrained by fear, lies, and the absolute power of authorities at various levels of seniority. Mixed into this is a back story of a serial child killer. What hope for justice in this environment where justice is whatever 'the authorities' want it to be? The real monsters are everywhere, have free reign and are unpunished whilst the innocents suffer repression. This fine film might chill the heart of anyone purporting to romanticise life under socialism.This tale is also a chilling glimpse of a dystopian future. Beautifully acted, this is not a slow plodding European arty movie. It is fast, efficiently told, and has avoided being sensationalist. The script is precise and the main character has the gravitas, integrity and virtue that a viewer can admire in a hero. I thought this movie was a thousand times better than the ridiculous Dunkirk supposedly depicting war and madness. And what can I say about the much undeservedly feted movie 'Mother' that attempts to depict a similar theme as this film with nonsensical storyline and gratuitous violence? I don't know why Child 44 is not admired more. It is a very fine film, and deserves accolades.

A serial murderer is at large in Stalinist USSR (1945). The victims are young boys. That is the background to what is really an attack on Stalinist tactics. We don't see much of the crime or even the investigation. Mostly we see a Western take on Soviet suppression. Don't get me wrong, Stalin was a mass murderer on a historic scale, and deserves vilification. But his minions were individuals. "Child 44" doesn't recognize such complexity. Instead, it reduces almost every character to good or evil. The exception is Raisa (Noomi Rapace in a beautiful performance), the wife of a captain in Soviet intelligence, Leo Demidov (Tom Hardy, in what may be his best performance to date). The arc of the story takes her from feeling forced into a marriage to a powerful gendarme to the dawning realization that Leo is a good man struggling with his brutal role and reputation in society.Ultimately, the two principal bad guys-- the child murderer (Paddy Considine) and Leo's colleague and nemesis (Joel Kinnaman)-- are nothing more than plot devices to deliver scenes of brutality, including a protracted beating of Leo. I saw the film streaming on TV, so I could fast-forward through scenes that made me suspect sadistic tendencies in the director, Daniel Espinosa. The only other film of his that I saw, "Safe House," showed the same tendencies ( and his 2017 movie "Life" has no shortage of pain and gore, according to reviews I read.) I'm not squeamish; there is a place for violence in cinema. But Espinosa indulged in it well beyond the needs of the story. The running time of 137 minutes is a tell. And the power of the story is not about the Soviet purges and gulags, where violence occurred. The story, at its heart, is about one spouse finding the true moral character in another-- a wife learning to trust her husband's love, and coming to love him in return. It's too bad such sensitivity didn't inform all the characters in the story, or spare the audience the excessive bloodthirst.