Review of Child 44 (2015) by Ydnar4 — 01 Aug 2015

Child 44 is directed by Daniel Espinosa (Safe House) and stars Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Noomi Rapace and Joel Kinnaman. The film also features famous director Ridley Scott (Alien, Gladiator) as a producer.

The film is based on the novel of the same name written by Tom Robert Smith from 2008. The film revolves around Leo Demidov, a troubled military police officer who investigates several child murders around Russia during the Josef Stalin era.

I was interested in Child 44 after the trailer was released. It seemed to promise a mysterious film about child murders and began to resemble Prisoners from 2013 which was one of the favorite movies of the last few years.

Tom Hardy also appears to be reaching the peak of his career where has done a very good job of choosing his roles at it seems like there are no roles that he can't play. Gary Oldman and Noomi Rapace have both appeared in films with Hardy before, Oldman in The Dark Knight Rises and Tinker Tailor Solider Spy and Rapace in The Drop.

The performances are almost the only reason that you would want to watch this movie. Tom Hardy does an excellent job and he does the best he can to try to keep this movie afloat and Noomi Rapace shows that she can hang with the big boys as she does very well also.

Gary Oldman was the second billed actor in the film but he does not have a constant presence in this movie, his first appearance is almost an hour into the movie and even after he gets underway he only appears in spots so he and Hardy share very little screen time.

Hardy and Rapace get most of the screen time and Oldman seems to take a bit of a back seat. Kinnaman even seems to have more of a presence in this film. The trailer displayed a totally different film than we got here.

The serial killer component is just a sub-plot in this movie and it is really about Tom Hardy's character searching for some sort of redemption after he refuses to turn his wife (Rapace) into the authorities who believe she is a traitor.

The plot gets even more clogged up when an unnecessary rivalry between Hardy and Joel Kinnaman as the two do not see eye to eye and it is obvious almost from the outset, but the rivalry just makes the movie more complicated and takes us away from the content that we are really interested in.

There is nothing wrong with Kinnaman's performance here I would even say he does pretty well but there is no need for his character to have such a prominent role in this movie. Then the biggest problem with Child 44 is the pacing.

This film is really never very exciting and since the plot is so stuffed the movie runs way to long and there are some extremely boring spots. I would really not recommend this film because you are really not getting what you're expecting and I must say that Child 44 may be my biggest disappointment so far this year.