This weekend’s Communist period
piece “Child 44” has suffered an
incriminating fate that even “Paul
Blart: Mall Cop 2” avoided: Russia
banned it right before its release, stating that the film reflected upon the
nation with evocations of Mordor (the evil land from J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings”), and in an
equally damning move, the film was not screened for critics in many major
cities. But unlike some of Hollywood’s stranger tales about film releases, “Child 44” doesn’t
need Hobbit-loving Russian government officials to equate it the land of Orcs,
or for no one in other countries to know this movie exists, to earn its legacy
as a blotch on the resumes of many talented people. “Child 44” is a fiasco by its
own free will.
Director Daniel Espinosa’s (“Easy Money,” “Safe House”) bungled epic,
based on the novel from Tom Rob Smith, tells of sons and daughters of Mother
Russia who are lost within Communism’s inhumanity. They live in a society
that claims to be Eden, but a brutal history of orphan-making famine, along
with day-to-day dictatorial lunacy, suggests otherwise. Though the quote is
never sourced, many of the characters in this world have been programmed to
believe in the same motto: “There
is no murder in paradise.”
The USSR’s main orphan in “Child 44” is Leo Demidov (Tom
Hardy). His parents died in the Holodomor famine in the Ukraine in the 1930s,
but he found a new family within Russian military, and was deemed a war hero
when seen on newspapers brandishing a Soviet flag after the Reichstag in 1945.
A few years later, in Moscow, he makes his living hunting traitors (such as
Jason Clarke’s
Anatoly) with comrades Vasili (Joel Kinnaman) and Alexei (Fares Fares), while
married to a schoolteacher, Noomi Rapace’s Raisa, who could
not harbor any less adoration for her husband. “Child 44” spends its time following Leo as he
leads the way for a society that creates paranoia, in which, as Anatoly
declares, “When you are
arrested, you are already guilty.”
The film eventually
lumbers to its actual narrative center, when Alexei’s young son is
found dead. Because murder does not exist in Russia, the government rules that
the boy was hit by a train, but Alexei, his family, and even the coroner know
that a fellow Russian is to blame. Though a rational man, Leo stands behind the
ruling, fearing to be listed as a traitor by his superior Major Kuzmin (Vincent
Cassel) if he challenges the government, and he suggests Alexei do the same.
Such efforts prove
pointless when Raisa is revealed to be an informant during interrogations on
Anatoly. Because Leo did not turn her in himself, the couple are exiled to the
industrial town of Volsk, where another boy is found dead, in a similarly
gruesome display. Working under his new superior General Mikhail Nesterov (Gary
Oldman), Leo begins to accept that this ain’t no coincidence,
and starts a controversial hunt to find the murderer, in order to prove against
his government’s
delusion about excusing itself from classifications of homicide.
The film is loaded
with actors who continue to be reliable. Hardy’s charisma is a
steal for any production that can get him, and the added support of Rapace,
Oldman, and Kinnaman provides particular dramatic security. The story may feel
endless, but they do not forfeit. As the cast collectively saturates fictional
beings who deserve to be in a better-realized film, they prove to not be the
problem of “Child 44.”
With these
performances, it’s
those pesky Russian accents that many of its Hollywood actors speak. They aren’t ruinous due to
questions of authenticity, but in how some garble their words. Lost key words
spoken by characters pile on the avoidable bugaboos. The most nagging one
involves Vincent Cassel describing what murder is considered to be in the
Soviet Union. It’s
such a climactic declaration that the film’s trailer treats it
prominently. Even there, as I listen over and over, it makes no sense. The
line: “Murder is strictly
a …Capillary’s disease? Captaineers
disease? Captainese disease? Water on the knee?”
An ancient saying
states that a film is written three times – in the screenplay, on set, and in
the editing room. The many narrative strands of “Child 44”could have been tangled in any one of
these stages, but it feels most of all to be the result of various editing
errors, creating a final product that is equally bloated and scatterbrained.
Instead of narrowing in on Hardy’s go-getter questioning his blind
obedience during this murder investigation, “Child
44”wants an ensemble
character scope that it can’t handle. In smaller doses, some
scenes are far too choppy, information and cohesion be damned, whether its
vicious hand-to-hand scuffles or facile exchanges of dialogue. On the other
hand, the film doesn’t hesitate to treat other scenes as
opportunities for rants about the terrors of Communism, as with a barbaric,
homophobic witch-hunt that garners a five-minute narrative diversion (a scene
that suggests provoking some Russian moviegoers, indeed). Or, when famished
story-lines need to be kicked back into action, the editing never resists
helping characters find each other with impeccable timing, or eventually giving
in and just showing us the murderer, because everyone else is too slow.
In the end, the
strangest mystery of “Child 44” involves Espinosa: Where did he lose focus? His previous two films, “Easy Money” (which was
presented by Martin Scorsese) and “Safe
House” affirm that the
central narrative of “Child 44” is right in his
crosshairs. (I’d more readily
trust him with a Jason Bourne movie than I would a sweeping Russian epic, but I
digress.) Instead, he’s only able to
continue crafting sturdy performances that present a few bursts of curious
moral quandaries. The overall tightness that elevated him from “Easy Money”to “Safe House,” however, is lost. While
“Child 44” now has some
strange release date tales, there are none to be heard yet about any vigorous
re-writes, re-shoots, or re-edits that would suggest the film was headed down
an alternate narrative course. Well, no
such mentions that have been admitted to the public, at least.
Source:: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/child-44-2015
