Review of Child 44 (2015) by Dogg B — 30 Dec 2015

As I thought this was one of the better movies I've seen in a long while, am a little sad in noting I'm in a minority here. Admittedly I'm a sucker for crime stories but this one seemed to offer a little extra.

The reality is the crime is solved very simply, as are, I'm guessing, a good number of crimes. What made the movie for me was the way the politics and social corruption complicated the simplicity of the crime.

It is not unlike the recent arrest of a police officer in Chicago for the shooting a black teenager who was mostly just walking down the street, though I imagine he may've been being disrespectful in some manner or way.

The solving of that crime was simple. There was a video detailing what happened. Nevertheless it seems politics and corruption somehow prevented anyone from doing anything about it for over a year and not until someone took them to court over the video.

Same deal in Child 44, except that's Stalinist Russia. Sort of rotten (not tomatoes) that Chicago and Stalinist Russia are similar in this respect. But that's what I think contributes to this being a good movie.

It takes what's essentially a period piece/crime drama, and makes a statement about the nature of the world and why it should be improved. I don't mean to imply here that Tom Hardy's character was altruistic, and working for some sort of better world.

Rather he was mainly just trying to dig himself out of the hole he'd fallen into.