Review: Child 44

The world of Child 44 is a dark one filled with distrust and betrayal, where people denounce their family, friends, and neighbours in order to survive. It is a world where, according to the Russian government, crime does not exist. Yet, there is murder to be found in paradise.

Andrei Chikatilo, on whose crimes Tom Rob Smith based his award-winning crime novel, was responsible for the sexual assault, murder, and mutilation of at least 52 women and children between 1978 and 1990. The film adaptation features a predominantly shrouded figure who, in theory, should be as terrifying as the so-called Red Ripper who inspired him. In execution, the serial killer makes for a whimpering character with a not particularly compelling motivation for his gruesome crimes.

Child 44 focuses on the killings' investigation and the killer's manhunt, but it also makes room for numerous narrative strands. Director Daniel Espinosa's original cut purportedly ran for about 5 1/2 hours. This would suggest that either Espinosa had quite a lot of material to deal with or that he simply likes shooting a lot of footage. All signs point to the former as the opening prologue, which compresses about 20 years of back story into less than fifteen minutes of screen time, foreshadows a density of events that will not be so gracefully rendered. Espinosa introduces the young Leo Demidov, one of the millions of boys orphaned from the state-imposed famine against the Ukrainians. Leo grows up to be a war hero; in 1945, he is photographed planting the Soviet flag in Reichstag, Berlin, an image that will symbolise Soviet dominance for years to come. By 1953, Leo is married to Raisa (Noomi Rapace) and a loyal member of the MGB, the precursor to the KGB.

The adult Leo is portrayed by the compulsively gripping Tom Hardy. This means that, despite Leo's forays into work-mandated violence, he is not without compassion. He refuses to shoot Anatoly Brodsky (Jason Clarke), an accused traitor who would rather stab his own gut than be captured by the MGB soldiers. Later, Leo upbraids one of his men, the ambitious and calculating Vasili (Joel Kinnaman), for shooting the couple who sheltered Brodsky in front of their two young daughters. His dressing down of Vasili comes back to haunt him when their boss Major Kuzmin (Vincent Cassel) assigns Leo to spy on Raisa, whose name was one of the seven reportedly given up by Anatoly. Leo's refusal to deem her guilty forces Kuzmin to ship the couple off to the small industrial town of Volsk, where Leo is demoted in rank and Raisa, a schoolteacher, is now a janitor.

Beset by professional and personal woes, Leo is determined to solve the mystery of who is killing all these young boys, removing their organs with surgical precision, and leaving their naked bodies in the woods. How can he when his new supervisor General Timur (Gary Oldman) suspects that Leo is a mole sent to Volsk to rat on Timur and his team? How can he when any attempt to re-enter Moscow to interview potential witnesses could endanger not only his and Raisa's lives but also the lives of her family and all of their friends? Meanwhile, the dead bodies keep piling up.

Setting the story during this particular time period was a clever choice by Smith. This is an era where paranoia ruled the so-called paradise, where stray words or perceived shifts in allegiance could make or break lives. Innocence is an impossibility - everyone knows what happens if you're marked as a traitor or refuse to name names. Whilst Espinosa initially does a good job of crafting such a toxic atmosphere, the gloom and doom becomes too much. Even scenes which unfold in sunshine feel coated with grime, and the oppressiveness is almost laughable.

Espinosa also fails to connect all the narrative threads in an elegant manner. Perhaps the re-inclusion of some of the three hours of excised footage might have mitigated this, perhaps Richard Price's screenplay was flawed from the get-go. In any case, all of the components exist separately from each other and that disconnect proves fatal as the film progresses. Leo's interest in the murders, for example, comes off as half-hearted even though one can imagine that he's motivated by his own childhood traumas and a need to redeem himself.

Fortunately, Espinosa has assembled a powerhouse cast who make Child 44 a fairly fascinating watch even if one lacks the investment in the rhythmless and overly convoluted plot.

Child 44

Directed by: Daniel Espinosa

Written by: Richard Price; adapted from Tom Rob Smith's novel

Starring: Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, Gary Oldman, Joel Kinnaman, Vincent Cassel, Paddy Considine, Jason Clarke, Fares Fares, Charles Dance, Sam Spruell, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Tara Fitzgerald