Child 44

There is no murder in paradise

Today, I had a friend over and we were going through my selection of movies and came across this and decided to see it. I don’t even know what made me get it in the first place, but I’m guessing the fact that it featured Tom Hardy played a significant role.

It starts off as a seeming war movie, showing the starvation that occurred in Ukraine during the Stalin imposed Holodomor and then moving on to World War II when the Red Army was victorious against Hitler’s forces.

The film uses these moments to build up the character of our protagonist played superbly by Tom Hardy. Showing us a man who is good at his job yet still retains his humanity in the face of crippling opposition, in a time when being liberal and outspoken is punished in the most brutal of fashions.

It’s a quiet movie, evenly paced and tries to draw you in. It tries and doesn’t always succeed (the accents can be a bit distracting).

Although for a movie sent in the 1950s, it is quite a tedious watch; being somber and downright depressing at times.

Our protagonist; a respected military man refuses to denounce his wife as a traitor and as a result looses everything he has worked so hard to build and is sent to a backward province where he has to start from scratch only to find that a murder that had been covered up in Moscow has trailed him here and is even bigger and goes even deeper than he ever thought possible.

It is a film about sacrifice and love and about a man who believes in doing what is right and sacrificing what he must to ensure that justice prevails.

Truly though, it is a forgettable movie. Yes it’s set in trying times and we are shown the struggles of the characters as they are presented to us but the truth is that we have seen this done before in other movies and sometimes it’s even done better.

Same goes for the core of the story

When it finally concludes, you’re left wondering what the point of it all was as it just seems all very random and there isn’t very much to recommend here other than you should see (read stream it) because you’re a Tom Hardy or Gary Oldman fan.

Honourable mention to Charles Dance who has a cameo in this movie that fits in perfectly with his persona.

Final Score: 5/10