Tom Hardy

Gary Oldman

Noomi Rapace

Fares Fares

Joel Kinnaman

Paddy Considine

Jason Clarke

Mark Lewis Jones

Vincent Cassel

Nikolaj Lie Kaas

Charles Dance

Xavier Atkins

Karel Dobrý

Agnieszka Grochowska

Petr Vaněk

Jana Stryková

Ursina Lardi

Michael Nardone

Finbar Lynch

Tara Fitzgerald

Josef Altin

Sam Spruell

Lorraine Ashbourne

Ned Dennehy

Jemma O'Brien

Lottie Steer

Barbara Lukešová

Zdeněk Bařinka

Petra Lustigová

Predrag Bjelac

Samuel Buttery

Ondřej Malý

Ivan G'Vera

Václav Jiráček

Anssi Lindström

Ondřej Volejník

Sonny Ashbourne Serkis

Heather Craney

Marie Jansová

Ivan Shvedoff

Romana Goščíková

Igor Farbak

Martin Hub

Kristýna Leichtová

Hana Frejková

Pavel Šimčík

Markéta Tanner

Michael Byrne

Amy Byrne

Matěj Kovárník

Andrea Koutkova

Helena Šteidlová

Waldo Mason

Rita Anjos

Jirina Spilajova

Dagmar Spoulová

Oleg Kim

Niamh O'Loan

Cristina Patterson

Jirí Hrstka

Dusan Robovsky

Martin Šácha

Vishal Vittal

Michal Biciste

Sarah Psquali-Lasani

Marie Kulmanova

Martina Mrazova

Dan Adam

Viktor Heřmánek

Jana Vlasáková

Petr Klobouk

Lucie Kulmanova

Martin Juhasz

Petr Procházka

Roman Tomana

Vrata Vosicka

Miroslav Bartek

Rudolf Prochazka

Marek Boček

Mark Sussman

Jan Rimský

Tommy Jay

Frantisek Mesícek

Patty Connolly

Vaclav Drobil

Ivo Červenka

Stepan Krizek

Jiří Nosek

Jan Simecek

Zbynek Havlin

Kurt Van Der Basch

Roland Safr

Jiri Masek

Petr Stuna

Jiří Holec

Martin Kingsley

Jana Chovancova

David Túma

David Gospodarczyk

Kamil Rezler

Jiri Horych

Viktor Höschl

Jan Kulman

Jan Blažíček

Alice Linhartová

Dorothy Sullivan

Sarah Young

Jaroslav Ungr

Martin Brych

Vladimír Duben

Václav Pinkas

Pavel Tatar

Sua Kook

Jakub Dvorak

Jeff Han

Michaela Synackova

Loan Phan

Charmaine Childs

Michal Krumpar

Patricia De Souza

Nicha Kumkeaw

Lisa Tutunjian

Susan Stewart

Michal Engrth

Brano Danis

Yvan Lucas

Bernhard Kimbacher

Matt Wallach

Maja Aspero Lind

Gwen Zhang

Ben McEwan

Pamela B. Green

Sallie Hard

Patricia Binga

Larry Garrison

Erik Feig

Martin Hladík

Jim J. Williams

Edmond Engelbrecht

Stephan Burle

Erika Nilsson

Hana Vorlova

Michaela Strnadová

Kat Spiess

Stuart Bruzek

Crime

Thriller

Child 44

Summit Entertainment

Worldview Entertainment

Lionsgate

Scott Free Productions

United States of America

English

based on novel or book

child murder

soviet union

murder

serial killer

military

stalinism

1950s

Reno

**A war hero who turned a police officer struggles with his departmental feud.**

It is a strange title. In the narration as well it does not properly reveals, more like an approximate count of something. It is a Russian story, I mean the Russian characters and the locations. It begins after the world war two, in Moscow, a top police officer caught between the departmental politics and a case. After the his investigation ended without a result, the sacked officer gets a lifeline to begin again life in another town. But the trouble follows him when he started to investigate the children's deaths. The result of the case brings the end to the tale with a tiny small twist.

The actors were decent, not very impressive. Especially I understand since it was internationally produced, they preferred English language, but I would have liked it in the original language to get best appeal. It was too long film, the first half was very boring. Because it was most unrelated to what comes in the later part of the film. When the narration shifts its base out of the Moscow, that's where it really gets very interesting. So after first 60 minutes, the real story begins.

This where the actors got better. Noomi Rapace and Tom Hardy, both were like the kicked off with full of energy. So the second half of the film makes it watchable. Directed by a 'Easy Money' filmmaker who also brought in his Swedish actors to play the smaller roles. It was not good as I expected, but ended well. I don't think it is worth a watch, but who knows what you like. So I neither recommend nor reject it. But it was an average film to me.

_5/10_

Filipe Manuel Neto

**An overly ambitious film, but still an interesting one.**

Honestly, I expected a little more from this movie. I found it on television, just by chance, but I had already heard about it, I'm not sure for what purpose, but I had the impression that it was a very good film. It's not as good as I expected, as it gets a little lost between politics and police mystery, and that ends up compromising the pace.

It all starts with a drama where an MGB agent named Leo Demidov tries to protect his wife after a political prisoner denounces her as his accomplice. The effort pays off, but it's so obvious that he wanted to protect her that his superiors send him to an industrial city on the outskirts of Ukraine. Meanwhile, he will have to tell a friend that his son died in an alleged train accident, but it is clear that the child was murdered. In the new city where he is posted, Leo discovers many more cases of children in the same situation, deducing that there is a murderer killing children along the railway line. The problem is to convince the Soviet police that these crimes are not exclusive to the capitalist world.

The film has good dialogues and the script is very good, but I felt that it is too ambitious and that it ends up not being able to handle it well. The difficulty in reconciling the two subplots (the criminal on the loose and the protagonist's conflict with the fanatical authorities), both equally powerful and relevant, is palpable. There is another plot point that leaves me with a lot of doubts, and that has to do with how Leo's wife changes radically, from someone passive and without relevance in the story to an active and cooperative figure, central to the following events. If this change, on the one hand, made it possible to put her back at the center of events, it also seems to be an inconsistency. The ending isn't bad, but it's inelegant: the atmosphere of tension and suspense gives way to more action, in absolute contrast to what the film had been doing.

The cast features several well-known actors, starting with Tom Hardy and Noomi Rapace in the lead roles. None of them were bad, they are both quite confidant and the interpretation they bring us is solid and well concepted. Joel Kinnaman is a convincing villain and plays the political fanatic well. Vincent Cassel and Gary Oldman are well-known veterans and pretty safe bets for the most prominent secondary characters. The only negative point I have to make (and I think it's not the actors' fault, but director Espinosa's) is that terrible pseudo-Russian accent that the actors tried to emulate, and which should never have been done. If the director wanted that kind of accent so badly, then he should have looked for Russian or Eastern actors who could speak in English.

Technically, the film relies heavily on cinematography and camera work. They tried as hard as they could for these elements to convey a variety of sensations to the public, from the biting Winter cold to the inhospitable, gray, unfriendly and distrustful atmosphere of Soviet cities during the 1950s. I also really liked the cars, the uniforms, costumes and sets, as there was a good effort at historical reconstruction, in general. The soundtrack does its job, but it doesn't stay in the ear.

Despite Oldman's involvement, it lacks all the dark charm of HBO's Citizen X. There is less of a dual examination of both the system of the USSR and Chikatilo, and the film suffers from that.

It's a little less compelling, the situation that unravels seems more incompetent than meddled. And the commentary that is left is more of the "this is what life was like under communism" and less of the "this is how the communist system interfered with the investigation and postponed his arrest"

You can kind of taste the difference between the two, as they are both important, the cops look more incompetent with this version, and that is, I think, doing them a bit of a disservice.

On the other hand, I doubt one would see either criticism if it were made today, so...take what you can get.

Child 44 Official Trailer #1 (2015) - Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman Movie HD

Child 44( 2015)

How do you find a killer who doesn’t exist?

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A review by Reno

Written by Reno on Tue Oct 04 2016

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