Susan Granger’s review of “Child 44” (Summit Entertainment/Central Partnership)
Perhaps there are some novels that should never be made into movies – which may explain why Tom Rob Smith’s 2008 suspenseful best-seller just doesn’t translate onto the big screen.
Set in the paranoid claustrophobia of late Stalin-era Russia, it revolves around Leo Demidov (Tom Hardy), a Ukrainian orphan who became the W.W. II hero who raised the flag over the Reichstag in Berlin in 1945. Now, Leo works as an interrogator in the MGB (predecessor of the KGB), chasing alleged spies to get them to rat on other alleged traitors.
One day, he’s summoned to handle a case involving a child’s death, the son of a colleague. Superficially, it appears to be an accident by the train tracks, but it soon becomes obvious that it’s murder.
Problem is: Leo’s told that murder is a capitalist’s disease that does not exist in the U.S.S.R. And it’s not just one homicide; it’s a series of grisly, grotesque child killings that no one wants to acknowledge.
Heavy-handedly adapted by veteran screenwriter Richard Price (“The Color of Money”) and ploddingly directed by Daniel Espinosa (“Safe House”), filmed on location in the Czech Republic, what should be a tension-filled thriller becomes mired in a multitude of undeveloped characters with too many clichéd subplots and incoherent complications.
Always a sturdy, reliable protagonist, Tom Hardy’s performance is weighed down by his overly thick accent. As his miserable, supposedly ‘unpatriotic’ schoolteacher wife Raisa, Noomi Rapace is burdened with motivations that continually change as the plot thickens. Which leaves Joel Kinnaman with the juiciest part as sniveling, cowardly agent Vassili.
Supporting roles are ably filled by Vincent Cassel, Paddy Considine, Jason Clarke and Gary Oldman, who does a couple of memorable scenes before disappearing for the final third of the film.
FYI: There was a brief international incident when this film was pulled from distribution in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus for so-called “historical inaccuracies,” but even that failed to arouse much interest.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Child 44” is a forbidding, forgettable 5. Read the book instead.
