Child 44 | |
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Directed by | Daniel Espinosa |
Screenplay by | Richard Price |
Based on | Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith |
Produced by |
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Starring | |
Cinematography | Oliver Wood |
Edited by | |
Music by | Jon Ekstrand |
Production companies | |
Distributed by |
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Release date |
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Running time | 137 minutes |
Countries |
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Language | English |
Budget | $50 million [3] |
Box office | $13 million [1] |
Child 44 is a 2015 mystery thriller film directed by Daniel Espinosa, written by Richard Price, and based on Tom Rob Smith's 2008 novel of the same name. The film stars an ensemble cast featuring Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Noomi Rapace, Joel Kinnaman, Paddy Considine, Jason Clarke, and Vincent Cassel. It was released on 17 April 2015. [4] Both the novel and the film are very loosely based on the case of Soviet serial killer Andrei Chikatilo. [5] The film was a box office bomb, grossing just $13 million against its $50 million budget.
During Stalin's rule of the Soviet Union in the early 1950s, Ministry of State Security (MGB) Agent and war hero Leo Demidov uncovers a strange and brutal series of child murders. However, MGB leadership refuses to acknowledge the deaths as murders because Soviet doctrine states that only capitalism creates serial killers. The son of Leo's partner is murdered by the serial killer and during Leo's investigation, his wife, Raisa, is accused of being disloyal to the state. Leo suspects that his amoral and ambitious enemy in the MGB, Vasili Nikitin, is behind the charges. Leo refuses to support the accusation and he is forced to take a demeaning militia position in the town of Volsk. Raisa accompanies him and must work as a janitor.
In Volsk, Leo meets colonel Mikhail Nesterov, his new commander. Meanwhile, Vasili calls Raisa and attempts to persuade her to leave Leo and join him in Moscow. When she refuses, Vasili orders a local MGB functionary to abuse her. Raisa later admits to Leo that she only agreed to marry him because she feared what would happen to her if she refused a high-ranking member of state security.
More child murder victims are discovered in Volsk and after Leo tells Raisa that he suspects this to be the work of a serial killer, she decides to help his investigation. Together, they convince Nesterov and his wife, Inessa, that the deaths must be investigated as serial murders. Further investigation reveals that the killer has claimed at least 44 victims and that he is traveling the rail lines to find his targets.
Leo and Raisa travel in secret to Moscow to interview a woman who reported seeing the killer. The interview does not bear fruit, however, and to escape possible pursuit by the MGB, they seek out Raisa's former colleague. However, during the meeting, Raisa discovers that the colleague is an informer and Leo kills him. Leo tells Raisa that she can leave him if she wishes but she says that she wants to stay with him.
Leo and Raisa return to Volsk where they discover that Vasili and his men have pursued them for killing the informer. They are arrested and interrogated, then put on a train to a work camp. During the train ride, they are attacked by the other passengers on orders of Vasili; after killing their assailants, Leo and Raisa jump off the train. They trek to Rostov where the highest concentration of the serial killer's victims has been found; they reason that the killer must work close to the rail yards there.
In the Rostov tractor factory, Leo identifies Vladimir Malevich as the killer by cross-referencing worker travel with the location and date of the murders. Leo and Raisa corner Malevich who surrenders to them. However, Malevich is suddenly shot in the head by Vassili, who has followed Leo and Raisa. Vassili tries to execute them, but after a vicious struggle, they kill him. Leo cleverly tells the MGB agents who arrive that Malevich killed Vassili and that he then shot the killer. Because Malevich was a POW in German camps, the MGB is able to (falsely) explain away his actions as those of a Nazi agent.
Leo is reinstated in Moscow; despite being offered a promising political position, he instead asks to create and lead a homicide division in Moscow. Leo and Raisa adopt two orphan girls.
Principal photography began in June 2013 in the cities of Prague, Ostrava, and Kladno in the Czech Republic, and continued in Romania. [6] For the brief scene in the Moscow underground the Prague metro was used. It was the first time in its history that it was shut to the public. [7] [8]
On 15 April 2015, the Russian film distributor Central Partnership announced that the film would be withdrawn from cinemas in Russia, although some media stated that screening of the film was blocked by the Russian Ministry of Culture. [9] [10] [11] The decision was made following the press screening the day before. The Ministry of Culture and the Central Partnership issued a joint press release stating that the screening of the film before the 70th anniversary of the Victory Day was unacceptable. [12] The Ministry of Culture claimed that it received several questions on the film's contents, primarily concerning "distortion of historical facts, peculiar treatment of events before, during and after the Great Patriotic War and images and characters of Soviet people of that era". [12] Russian minister of culture Vladimir Medinsky welcomed the decision, but stressed that it was made solely by the Central Partnership. However, in his personal statement Medinsky complained that the film depicts Russians as "physically and morally base sub-humans", and compared the depiction of Soviet Union in the film with J. R. R. Tolkien's Mordor, and wished that such films should be screened neither before the 70th anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War, nor any other time. [13] However, he also stated that the film would be available in Russia on DVD and online. [14]
The film was also withdrawn from cinemas due to distributor’s decision in Belarus, [15] Ukraine, [16] Kazakhstan, [17] and Kyrgyzstan, while release of the film was postponed until October in Georgia. [18]
Ukrainian film director and producer Alexander Rodnyansky criticised the decision not to release Child 44 as bad for the country's film industry. "Before, films where Soviet and Russian heroes were presented not in the best way have been released in Russia, but nothing similar happened. Now everything to do with history should clearly fit into a kind of framework set by the culture ministry." [19] In Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which are EU members, the film was released.
On Rotten Tomatoes, Child 44 has an approval rating of 27%, based on 82 reviews, with an average score of 4.82/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "There's a gripping story at the heart of Child 44 and a solid performance from Tom Hardy in the lead, but it all still adds up to a would-be thriller that lacks sufficient thrills." [20] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 41 out of 100, based on 25 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". [21]
Writing in The Guardian , Peter Bradshaw gave the film 2 stars out of 5 and reported that "Tom Rob Smith's page-turning bestseller from 2008 has been turned into a heavy, indigestible meal of a film, full of actors speaking English with very heavy Russian accents – actors from England, Sweden, Lebanon, Poland, Australia, almost anywhere but Russia". Bradshaw added: "Tom Hardy brings his robust, muscular presence to the role of Leo and he is watchable enough, but the forensic and psychological aspects are just dull; there is no fascination in the detection process. […] Everything is immersed in a cloudy brown soup". [22] Also in The Guardian, reviewer Phil Hoad wrote: "Child 44 has a fascinating premise and setting [but] failed to convincingly package this as either an upscale thriller along the lines of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy , as implied by a powerhouse cast also featuring Gary Oldman, Noomi Rapace and Paddy Considine; or as something racier à la The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo or Gone Girl (indeed, the film itself falls awkwardly between these two stools)". Hoad added, "[a]s for the debacle over the Slavic-slathered English spoken by the entire cast, it further highlights the uncertainty about whether Child 44 was intended for the multiplex or the arthouse. Presumably a decision made to placate the former, opting to turn the film into an Iron Curtain version of 'Allo 'Allo! damaged its integrity. Aren't we past this kind of cultural bastardisation? It is possible for foreign-language films to cross over: The Lives of Others , which meted out its own totalitarian intrigue in German, took $66m overseas – the kind of cash Child 44 will never see". [23]
In The Observer , Jonathan Romney found, "In writer Richard Price's boil-down of the labyrinthine original, the whodunit loses all momentum" adding that "the whole thing is scuppered by having everyone speak in borscht-thick Russian accents" before concluding that, "[the film is] shot in several shades of Volga mud and drags like a Thursday afternoon in Nizhniy Novgorod". [24]
Kazimir Severinovich Malevich was a Russian avant-garde artist and art theorist, whose pioneering work and writing influenced the development of abstract art in the 20th century. He was born in Kiev, modern-day Ukraine, to an ethnic Polish family. His concept of Suprematism sought to develop a form of expression that moved as far as possible from the world of natural forms (objectivity) and subject matter in order to access "the supremacy of pure feeling" and spirituality. Active primarily in Russia, Malevich was a founder of the artists collective UNOVIS and his work has been variously associated with the Russian avant-garde and the Ukrainian avant-garde, and he was a central figure in the history of modern art in Central and Eastern Europe more broadly.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation is the interior ministry of Russia.
Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo was a Ukrainian-born Soviet serial killer nicknamed the Butcher of Rostov, the Rostov Ripper, and the Red Ripper who sexually assaulted, murdered, and mutilated at least fifty-two women and children between 1978 and 1990 in the Russian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR, and the Uzbek SSR.
Butyrskaya prison, usually known simply as Butyrka, is a prison in the Tverskoy District of central Moscow, Russia. In Imperial Russia it served as the central transit prison.
The Ministry of State Security, abbreviated as MGB, was a ministry of the Soviet Union from 1946 to 1953 which functioned as the country's secret police. The ministry inherited the intelligence and state security responsibilities of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) and People's Commissariat for State Security (NKGB). The MGB was led by Viktor Abakumov from 1946 to 1951, then by Semyon Ignatiev until Stalin's death in 1953, upon which it was merged into an enlarged Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD).
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Tom Rob Smith is an English author, screenwriter and producer.
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