We review this week's other release, Child 44 starring Mad Max.
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| "Shhhhh. I'm planning our escape from this dire movie!" |
British
actor Tom Hardy is one of the great actors of our modern times, best known as
Britain’s most dangerous prisoner in Bronson
and Bruce Wayne’s arch nemesis in The
Dark Knight Rises. Hardy got great
accolades for the minimalist drama Locke
and is set towards superstardom in the forthcoming big budget reboot of Mad Max.
Unfortunately
in this week’s newly released historically dramatic action thriller Child 44, his efforts get lost in the
shuffle of this $44 million Scott Free produced dud. Based on a critically and commercially
successful novel of the same name about a disgraced Russian MGB agent who is
assigned to investigate a series of child murders, what could have been an
engaging period thriller set during the height of Stalinism is instead a dour
and tedious bore that meanders and fails to engage. Where the novel gave room to excoriate
hypocrisies within the Soviet state, largely with turning a blind eye to crimes
to uphold the notion of communism as blissful ignorance, the Ridley Scott
produced film doesn’t do a whole lot with that beyond brutalizing the viewer
with oppressive violence. With few
surprises outside of the obligatory fist fights Hardy is tasked with, Child 44 mostly wallows in
unpleasantness and lacks focus, never really sure which plot thread is more
pressing than the other.
It’s
a shame because Tom Hardy is actually quite good as Leo Demidov, the former
pawn of fascism who gradually develops a guilt complex over his position of
power and the abuses committed by his comrades.
That’s not to say he’s altogether a convincing Russian alongside the
equally distracting casting of Noomi Rapace and Gary Oldman as fellow Russians,
but he sells the part well enough. Most
of the film is lensed in that desaturated grayscale seen in the likes of Alan
Parker’s Angela’s Ashes, where
everything looks pretty miserable.
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| "Weren't we just in that other stinker, The Drop together? Nevermind. Shut up and kiss me!" |
In
terms of filmmaking, there’s not a whole lot although a shot of a Russian
factory recalls Mordor from The Lord of
the Rings, a moment of unintentional hilarity for those who are really
paying attention. When the film isn’t
punishing hardened characters with stock villains and melodramatic archetypes
who seem to have wandered off the set of Gymkata,
it drags its feet before getting to any real point with many elongated
monologues and moments for Hardy to show off his acting chops by crying on
camera.
Neither
an outright bad movie nor a particularly good one, Child 44 is an average and forgettable effort which wastes the
actors, a true story that’s otherwise worth telling and a lot of dollars which
could have been better spent elsewhere.
Word has it the film was recently banned in Russia prior to theatrical
release due to how it transforms the country into a Peter Jackson fantasyland. While the right to creative expression should
absolutely be upheld in every nation, Russian viewers shouldn’t feel too bad
about having Child 44 withheld from
their eyesight. Sluggish and misguided
with too many threads that don’t add up, my friendly suggestion will be to let
this one go quietly into the night. If
nothing else, Child 44 piqued my
interest in the source material upon which the film was based, if only to
recognize how a powerful history lesson resulted in a cinematic mediocrity that
should have hit the dumping ground season sooner than later.
-Andrew Kotwicki