‎Child 44 (2015) directed by Daniel Espinosa • Reviews, film + cast • Letterboxd

Child 44

2015 Directed by Daniel Espinosa

How do you find a killer who doesn’t exist?

Set in Stalin-era Soviet Union, a disgraced MGB agent is dispatched to investigate a series of child murders -- a case that begins to connect with the very top of party leadership.

Tom Hardy Gary Oldman Noomi Rapace Joel Kinnaman Paddy Considine Jason Clarke Mark Lewis Jones Vincent Cassel Fares Fares Nikolaj Lie Kaas Charles Dance Xavier Atkins Karel Dobrey Agnieszka Grochowska Petr Vaněk Jana Stryková Ursina Lardi Michael Nardone Finbar Lynch Tara Fitzgerald Josef Altin Sam Spruell Lorraine Ashbourne Ned Dennehy Jemma O'Brien Lottie Steer Barbora Lukešová Zdeněk Bařinka Petra Lustigová Show All…

137 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by Matt Singer ★★ 5

"Look at this movie’s cast: Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace. Joel Kinnaman. Gary Oldman. Vincent Cassel. Paddy Considine. Even Jason Clarke shows up for a couple scenes. That’s a staggering roster of acting talent. It shouldn’t be possible to make a movie this bad with a cast that good. And yet somehow it is. And CHILD 44 is the proof."

Full review: screencrush.com/child-44-review/
Review by Esteban Gonzalez ★★½ 2

"There is no murder in paradise.”

Another of my most anticipated films of the year that failed to live up to my expectations. I usually tend to look forward to films based solely on the director, but this time I was excited about the cast: Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Jason Clarke, and Noomi Rapace. Child 44 is an adaptation of Tom Rob Smith’s best selling novel directed by Daniel Espinosa (Safe House) set in Stalin-era Soviet Union. Of course it is easily going to be labelled as anti-Soviet propaganda considering it is based on a novel written by a British author and directed by a Swedish director. The screenwriter, Richard Price (The Color of Money), is American and despite being…
Review by Matthew L. Brady ★★

I know this is a really late review as this movie came out in April, and the reason for that I completely forgot about this one. It's until I was looking through what I've seen to review and I came across this and I thought to myself "Oh I remember that the movie. Well I should just get my thoughts out since I got nothing else to review until tomorrow".

The movie is not very good. Actually, it's pretty disappointing. It had such a big name cast to it but even they didn't do anything special in this movie. I'm going to forget about this movie and so will you at the end of year. I'm not going to waste my time or your time taking about this movie, as do you really care about me going into detail about a film that's not good. Nobody cares.
Review by bree1981 ★★★½ 5

My expectations were fairly low going into this film as I hadn't read too many favourable reviews but I came away pleasantly surprised. Set in the Stalin era of the Soviet Union, Tom Hardy plays Leo Demidov, a Russian war hero who is now a highly ranked officer in the Russian security service, his job is to hunt down so called traitors and turn them in for interrogation and once they are coerced into admitting guilt, death by firing squad. The idealistic officers world is turned upside down by a double tragedy, the child of his best friend Alexei (Fares Fares) is murdered with his superior forcing him to take part in a cover-up and he's tasked with looking into…
Review by Robby Warren

There's a lot to admire about "Child 44", such as the great cast who all turn in very good performances, solid cinematography, a few entertaining and very well done action sequences, a harrowing but interesting plot, and the costume related stuff fit the 1950's perfectly, however it definitely has it's flaws. The directing by Daniel Espinosa is very bland, the writing is terrible, the characters aren't interesting, the run-time could've been cut down by at least 15 minutes, and it doesn't give the plot the treatment it deserves.

Tom Hardy is fantastic (As ALWAYS) and there were two very effective action sequences, but I was left pretty disappointed with this one. Definitely not bad enough to earn it's 24% on Rotten Tomatoes, but still not that good.
Review by Mikael Stånggren ★★★ 2

As a Swede, you always feel a little extra proud when our thespian exports (in this case Joel Kinnaman and Noomi Rapace, among others) get to perform alongside A-listers like Gary Oldman and Tom Hardy.

The enjoyment in this becomes short-lived, however, when they are presented with a script that doesn’t quite match the talent. And when the acting is furthermore undermined by strained Russian accents…well, then the way is virtually paved for wounded credibility.

Child 44 takes place in Stalin’s Soviet in 1953. Central to the narrative is Tom Hardy as Leo Demidov, a military police agent. His job mainly seems to revolve around chasing down traitors and bringing them to justice. Unlike certain sadistically prone colleagues, however, he…

Recent reviews

Review by Zeke Knott ★

I genuinely can't focus on the boring, melodramatic plot of this film. Shot with that annoying, zoomed in lens that everyone who is a worse director than Greengrass uses. "Oh, but it makes you feel like youre spying, like the spies in this movie about secret police" (is it about secret police? None of the dialogue is even registering.) Fucking hell.

Tom Hardy is pretty good. Same with Gary Oldman. Shame they're in this and not in something else. Even the dude from Suicide Squad is pretty good.
Review by alyssa ★★★

these three stars are for tom hardy
Review by jaime loves yaz khan ★★

thank god tom hardy is hot
Review by Vilu ★★★½

Tom Hardy and Noomi Rapace work together again challenge!
Review by Toms Bazbauers ★½

Generic
Review by katie ★

fell asleep but Tom Hardy is a hunk
Review by kelteona ★

And the Oscar for the most ridiculous plot in a film I've watched this year goes tooooo...

I'm not even talking about all the obvious factual mistakes and inconsistencies ("there's no murder in paradise" - who are those 43 people "apprehended by the state" then?); I do think that people shouldn't write stories about places they know next to nothing about, so I decided early on to pretend it's just some imaginary country loosely based on the USSR.

But the main storyline was a giant mess anyway. There was a lot of pure dumb luck involved for a film that's supposed to be a detective story; the relationship between the main characters was just incomprehensible, and the killer, who I…
Review by Kelsey ★★½

a little too slow-paced for the core of the story therein. Tom Hardy and Noomi Rapace are absolutely amazing, but there's a lacking sense of urgency to the story. which is a shame, considering the central plot is the hunt for a serial child killer in a country whose government refuses to acknowledge that murder can even happen under their control.

a story like that deserves something a bit more intense and fast-paced, in my opinion.
Review by BrodiesFilmkritiken ★★

Ich schreibe zu ausnahmslos jedem Film den ich schaue einen Artikel oder eine Kritik für diese Seite, daher kommts auch vor daß ich hier über Filme schreibe die ich nicht richtig oder nur kaum gesehen habe um die Lückenlosigkeit nicht zu unterbrechen. Dies ist so ein Fall. Im Kern möchte ich es einen ganz normalen Krimiplot nennen, bei dem es darum geht daß scheußlich zugerichtete Kinderleichen vorgefunden werden und ein mehr oder weniger kaputter Held auf Mördersuche geht. Etwas ungewöhnlich sind der Ort und der Schauplatz, nämlich das immernoch von den Kriegsfolgen gezeichnete Rußland des Jahres 1953. Tom Hardy spielt den stoischen Ermittler. Noomi Rapace und Gary Oldman bekleiden weitere Parts und das war schon alles was ich bewußt aufgenommen…