Child 44
Director: Daniel Espinosa
Starring: Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, Gary Oldman, Joel Kinnaman
Four stars
If you see one Tom Hardy film this year, what will it be? The British actor is in such a rich vein of form, it’s almost impossible to answer.
The prospect of this exciting British star in a dual role as both of the London gangsters the Kray twins in Legend, or replacing Mel Gibson as the iconic Road Warrior in Mad Max: Fury Road are both delicious prospects. First out of the gate, however, is Child 44, a slow-burning but satisfying thriller set in Soviet-era Russia.
Based on the award-winning novel by Tom Rob Smith, which was inspired by the true-life case of child-killer Andrei Chikatilo, the story is centred on Hardy’s character, Leo Demidov, a former war hero-turned-secret policeman, who spends his days hunting down traitors in Soviet-era Russia.
When the son of a colleague is murdered, Leo initially considers it a one-off crime – until mounting evidence gradually begins to suggest otherwise.
Scripted by the novelist Richard Price, who wrote some of the best episodes of The Wire, Child 44 is a dense, involving story laced with Stalinist-era politics. The Communist-Party line, Leo is told, is that there can be "no murder in paradise" – and when he continues to investigate, his life begins to unravel.
After making a powerful enemy in the shape of his colleague Vasili (Joel Kinnaman), Leo’s timid teacher wife Raisa (Noomi Rapace) is accused of being a spy.
Eventually leading Leo and Raisa to a grim Soviet outpost, overseen by Gary Oldman's General Mikhail Nesterov, Child 44 has ambitions way beyond being a police procedural.
Does it manage to realise these ambitions? Not quite – the plot is muddled and the pacing wayward. But there are considerable pleasures to be had – notably watching Hardy as he delivers an immaculate performance. From his accent to his mannerisms, it’s a detailed, studied turn, with nothing left to chance.
Ridley Scott, who produced the film, originally intended to direct it, but the reins were taken over by Daniel Espinosa, the Swedish filmmaker behind the Denzel Washington thriller Safe House. If he is a little too inexperienced to really dig deep beneath the superficial thriller aspects, he at least knows how to cast a movie – with Vincent Cassel, Paddy Considine and Jason Clarke all making welcome appearances.
A movie made of mavericks, then, but credit should also go to the production designer Jan Roelfs, who evocatively evokes the shabbiness of Stalin’s Russia. The result, if not quite explosive, has an uncompromising, stomach-squeezing quality to it. It’ll leave you in knots.
artslife@thenational.ae
