Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *

Cast: Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, Mark Lewis Jones, Joel Kinnaman, Fares Fares, Karel Dobrey, Agnieszka Grochowska, Petr Vanek, ana Stryková, Jason Clarke, Ursina Lardi, Michael Nardone, Jemma O’Brien, Lottie Steer, Barbora Lukesová, Petr Semerád, Paddy Considine, Zdenek Barinka, Finbar Lynch, Ned Dennehy, Vincent Cassel, Hana Frejková, Gary Oldman, Tara Fitzgerald, Charles Dance, Xavier Atkins.

As you flick through the pages of any history book that concerns itself with the aftermath of World War Two, the division of world politics that Churchill described as being “An iron curtain” being drawn across Europe, the more you realise that the world was truly run by the suspicious, arrogant and seemingly insane minds, it could be said that the two polar opposites had much more in common than originally thought. The only true difference being in the way that suspicion was installed into the people of the United States of America and the U.S.S.R.

In any society, let alone the “Paradise” that Stalin believed in, the thought of murder, of taking someone’s life, is an abhorrence that must be stamped out and yet do you denounce it by suggesting it never takes place or do you hold your hands up to most heinous crime and deal with it?. As the new Tom Hardy film Child 44 suggests, murder is not possible in the Soviet ideal but crimes against the state are the ultimate criminal act and yet a murderer roams free, able to pick boys up at random and dispose of them; yet according to investigators, no murders are possible.

Child 44 is not just a harrowing look at the way ideology can spread like a disease in the minds of those it seeks to protect, on either side of the argument in this particular case, but also the way it can lead to corruption. By ignoring the situation, the matter at hand becomes hazardous, it becomes the symptom of a two headed sided coin suffering from metal fatigue and the film superbly portrays the grim reality faced Leo Demidov, played with bleak fascination by Tom Hardy, as he faces being labelled a traitor to the cause, yet also wanting to see justice done for all the families of the murdered children.

To go from hero of the war against Germany to being sent to outreaches of the Soviet Empire because he refused to denounce his unhappily married wife to the authorities when they accused her of spying for the British, Leo Demidov is drawn into solving the brutal murders of children from behind official channels. It is perhaps inconceivable to the British mindset how unique this is, to have a police force that can never investigate something that the state officially says never happens, to do it under the intensity of being underground and with no friends and in the harsh reality of being a citizen of one of the two most obscene political religions to occupy the minds of the world at the time.

To feel Leo Demidov’s pain is to understand how maddening it must be to investigate something with not just your hands tied behind your back but with your eyes blindfolded as well. It is a pain that Tom Hardy conveys with precision and yet underneath it all, the grimness of the world away from Moscow, the sheer depths of despair that the state can send you to a whim of suspicion and no real evidence attached, there is very little coming from any other actor in the film that really drives the message home save Josef Altin’s haunting portrayal of Alexander, the homosexual Station Master who is driven to an obscene course of action by the questioning of Gary Oldman’s General Mikhail Nesterov.

Not even the normally bullish Paddy Considine appears to really get in the mood for delivering what could be considered one of the most loathed characters in modern times. It is that makes the film an average watch but anyone who sees that might attest, the action demands more than the actors, save Josef Altin and Tom Hardy, are willing to commit. At times, the pace of the film seems far too contrived and impossible to place into true context and with it, shows itself to be honourable but straying far too much into manufactured and beige.

So much more could have been done with Child 44, yet like the systems that ruled the world after World War Two, it all goes a bit flat and tasteless, a film, like rusting ideology, that shines brighter, the further you are from its epicentre.

Ian D. Hall