Child 44

I hope it's dawned on everyone far and wide that Daniel Espinosa is not a director of grim historical thrillers, because he's not very good at choosing his writers. He’s good with atmosphere and setting, but the stupid denouement isn't quite the same as the fact that he sinks the whole thing into dark grey fuzzy filters. Please someone get him to make a Bourne sequel, or another Rambo, because not many people can do harder, rawer action. There's not much of it, but it's delicious. (21/09/2015)

It's a very enjoyably international film, but unfortunately it's torn between being a crime drama or a dark period drama, and maybe that works somewhere, but it didn't quite work for me here. The acting wasn't great, but the worst was the dark shaky camerawork where you couldn't really see what was going on during the scenes with more action. Too long, indecisive, with good and bad scenes. An average 55%. (02/10/2017)

Or what happens when Americans decide to shoot a political detective story in predominantly Eastern European co-production. The politics of the times are presented to us as if we did not know them ourselves. There is absolutely nothing new in this. After some time, you'll realize that it's primarily a crime thriller, where the political background is portrayed in a drawn-out manner. What I don't understand is why American and British actors have to speak with such a ridiculous accent that is no closer to Russian than classic English. (10/08/2015)

I'm tempted to read the book to compare whether it already beats on the reader (viewer) or whether the film is the grandest burial of the overblown ambitions of the American big screen in a decade. A few notes: For all his popularity, Hardy doesn't pull off the lead role. His attempt to play an introvert is shattered by his blustering and considerably "limited acting register" [© Lima]; acting-wise, Oldman and Kinnaman are at their minimum, even though they play limited (Gary) or downright useless (Joel) characters; every time Kinnamann's Vasili appears, the film bombs the viewer with an absolute WTF moment, best exemplified by the entire ten-minute sequence where the lead pair are thrown into a cattle truck; out of a whole bunch of plot lines, not one of them works, and there's no meaningful denouement either, so there's an extra hour in the film and another hour missing; the actual investigation wouldn't have been allowed even by Schimanski's dramaturgists; Wood's cinematography drowns it in shadows - it's not dark, it's opaque; and most importantly, about halfway through, the main characters would have ended up in the gulag in real life, without mercy. I haven't been this embarrassed for a movie in a long time. (26/07/2015)

Interesting film. A solid cast, nice period atmosphere and look and one excellent bloody scene on a train, that's what I would highlight here. As far as the pace is concerned it's a rather slower film, there's not much action, the serial killer is only a minor element, which is a pity, but it's probably worth watching, it has a lot going for it. 65% (22/07/2015)