Child 44 is Daniel Espinoza’s silver screen adaptation of the eponymous novel by Tom Rob Smith. The film stars Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, Gary Oldman, Joel Kinnaman, Charles Dance, & Vincent Cassel.

Premise: A disgraced member of the military police investigates a series of nasty child murders during the Stalin-era Soviet Union.

Review: Child 44 has an intriguing plot and takes place in such an interesting era in soviet history. The film’s not very straight forward because they really set it up, the era, the back stories, the relationship between the characters are all set up before they hit the ground running with the selling point of story. So you sort of know your characters – who they are, how they see themselves, and how other people see them – when you get in the thick of it. 

The set up in Child 44 makes for a lot of tense relationships and subplots in the film that only adds to the realistic feel of the situation.

The sheer fear, paranoia, and despair is palpable. The cast did a great job as to giving us an insight of what’s going on in these character’s heads. There is a lot more going on than just the investigation, Agent Leo Demidov (Tom Hardy) has all these

hurdles that he has to overcome to reach his goal, to potentially catch this serial killer. 

As interesting as the investigation is, the relationship between the characters is as captivating, but Raissa (Noomi Rapace) and Leo’s is quite the unconventional love story. A great attention to details was put in the film but I gotta say, the contacts on some of the actors looked cheap as hell and sort of threw me off whenever I looked at them. And as good as I think the movie is, there is no doubt in my mind that the book is infinitely better because the film lacks a certain finesse that experiencing a book has.  

Child 44 is a dark thriller with an intriguing and riveting plot with great dramatic tension. What did you think?