Directed by:
Daniel EspinosaScreenplay:
Richard PriceCinematography:
Oliver WoodComposer:
Jon EkstrandCast:
Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, Joel Kinnaman, Gary Oldman, Jason Clarke, Fares Fares, Vincent Cassel, Josef Altin, Paddy Considine, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Ned Dennehy (more)VOD (4)
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A politically-charged serial killer thriller set in 1953 Soviet Russia, CHILD 44 chronicles the crisis of conscience for secret police agent Leo Demidov [Tom Hardy], who loses status, power and home when he refuses to denounce his own wife, Raisa [Noomi Rapace], as a traitor. Exiled from Moscow to a grim provincial outpost, Leo and Raisa join forces with General Mikhail Nesterov [Gary Oldman] to track down a serial killer who preys on young boys. Their quest for justice threatens a system-wide cover-up enforced by Leo's psychopathic rival Vasili [Joel Kinnaman], who insists "There is no crime in Paradise." (Summit Entertainment)
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I hope it's dawned on everyone far and wide that Daniel Espinosa is not a director of grim historical thrillers, because he's not very good at choosing his writers. He’s good with atmosphere and setting, but the stupid denouement isn't quite the same as the fact that he sinks the whole thing into dark grey fuzzy filters. Please someone get him to make a Bourne sequel, or another Rambo, because not many people can do harder, rawer action. There's not much of it, but it's delicious.
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Or what happens when Americans decide to shoot a political detective story in predominantly Eastern European co-production. The politics of the times are presented to us as if we did not know them ourselves. There is absolutely nothing new in this. After some time, you'll realize that it's primarily a crime thriller, where the political background is portrayed in a drawn-out manner. What I don't understand is why American and British actors have to speak with such a ridiculous accent that is no closer to Russian than classic English.
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I'm tempted to read the book to compare whether it already beats on the reader (viewer) or whether the film is the grandest burial of the overblown ambitions of the American big screen in a decade. A few notes: For all his popularity, Hardy doesn't pull off the lead role. His attempt to play an introvert is shattered by his blustering and considerably "limited acting register" [© Lima]; acting-wise, Oldman and Kinnaman are at their minimum, even though they play limited (Gary) or downright useless (Joel) characters; every time Kinnamann's Vasili appears, the film bombs the viewer with an absolute WTF moment, best exemplified by the entire ten-minute sequence where the lead pair are thrown into a cattle truck; out of a whole bunch of plot lines, not one of them works, and there's no meaningful denouement either, so there's an extra hour in the film and another hour missing; the actual investigation wouldn't have been allowed even by Schimanski's dramaturgists; Wood's cinematography drowns it in shadows - it's not dark, it's opaque; and most importantly, about halfway through, the main characters would have ended up in the gulag in real life, without mercy. I haven't been this embarrassed for a movie in a long time.
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It's a very enjoyably international film, but unfortunately it's torn between being a crime drama or a dark period drama, and maybe that works somewhere, but it didn't quite work for me here. The acting wasn't great, but the worst was the dark shaky camerawork where you couldn't really see what was going on during the scenes with more action. Too long, indecisive, with good and bad scenes. An average 55%.
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The primary things I look for in movies are the direction, editing, and camera work. Minor things like the script or the acting I can work with when the first items can properly stick their tongue in my ear. Child 44 was made by an excellent director, shot with excellent cinematography, cast with excellent actors (Hardy makes a scene just by sitting in it and staring at a wall), only to be defiled by constant over-cutting to the tolerable limit of 137 minutes. In the second half, scenes are stacked on top of each other with dreadful editing. Dialogue has obviously been brutally cut (you can tell as much from the ill-fitting inserts of various close-ups of hands or silent faces), you can tell by various elements that scenes should often have looked completely different and been devoted to nothing else, over half of the scenes lack spatial exposition and the introduction of some supporting characters, and the list goes on. Basically, the film treats the script the way a tabloid treats events – picking only the juiciest bits, taking them out of context, and using the source material only as a means to somehow hold it all together. Still, Espinosa is an excellent filmmaker and Wood a skilled cinematographer. The shot composition and lighting are absolutely incredible, and I hope the full-cut makes it out one day so I can truly, thoroughly enjoy the film.
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