Child 44

It seems to me that the 2015 British - American mystery thriller " Child 44 " is getting a raw deal. Apparently the critics panned it. Directed by Daniel Espinosa, written by Ricard Price and based on Tom Rob Smith's 2008 novel I myself thought the movie brilliant. Tom Hardy puts on a tour de force performance as Leo Demidov, a Ministry of State Security agent who tries to unravel a series of baffling child murders and in the process infuriates government officials who see even a hint at the idea of a mass murder as intolerable seeing the Soviet doctrine believes "there is no murder in paradise", the supposed worker's paradise under Stalin that is mandated to be free of crime , a disease
seen as evidence of the West's inferiority. But Leo Demidov persists at grave risk to his life and the life of his wife Raisa Demidova, eloquently played by Noomi Rapace. Together they are able to convince General Nesterov played by Gary Oldman with Shakespearean dignity and class, that there is validity to their case, that the large number of children murdered no longer can be considered as accidents. The movie has gotten criticism for having the actors speak English with very heavy Russian accents which was seen as a distraction from an already complex plot. But I believe the thick accents and the at times strain required to follow the conversations as a result of them adds to the murky politics the plot tries to wade through. Life under Stalin was terrifying and invaded people's daily lives to a psychotic degree. The distrust, the fear, the whispers, the omnipresence of the secret police who would take people away to be murdered or sent to the horror of the Gulag system of labour camps for the slightest infractions, from suspicion to rumour, was everywhere like poisoned air. No one could escape it. The Herculean effort Tom Hardy and Noomi Rapace's character demonstrate to fight the brutal, dehumanizing system in a quest to get to the truth is impressive. Stumbling over the accents of the actors misses the point entirely. The movie comes across as coated in molasses because the Stalinist system made life that way for the millions of its victims. Life was meant to be stagnant, unsolvable, unmovable with the granite colossus of Stalin and his army of secret police and enforcers gluing people's psyches and bodies to the cement of his demonic reign. This movie needs to be seen. The acting is brilliant, the plot breath taking. The effort put forth by Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, Gary Oldman, Joel Kinniman, Vincent Cassel and Jason Clarke are valiant. Check out this amazing movie that sheds light on a part of the terrror of Stalin's reign in the Ukraine, the now infamous genocide of 1932- 1933, the Holodomor that claimed the lives of anywhere it is estimated between 2.5 to 7.5 million people.