Child 44 is yet another installment in the long, sacred line of films featuring English-speaking actors donning thick foreign accents so as to give the film “authenticity” without making people (gasp!) read subtitles for 110 minutes. What that signals about Daniel Espinosa‘s newest film, itself the latest pairing between Tom Hardy and Gary Oldman (this follows Tinker Tailor and The Dark Knight Rises), is unclear, but how unfortunate, still, that nothing else in this first preview manages to intrigue.
It’s based on a true story, sure, and the source material (a novel by Tom Rob Smith) offers a peek into various ideological struggles that were so prominent in the Soviet Union — which, to these eyes and ears, is a fascinating topic. The rest? Well, we’ll have to wait and see, for it’s ever so likely that the project’s being sold with some generic music and hacky cutting because a marketing team thinks this is the best of way of getting people in seats. This is too fine a combination of set-up and stars to let go to waste, but we wouldn’t exactly be surprised if that’s the end result.
Watch the trailer below:
Synopsis:
A politically-charged serial killer thriller set in 1953 Soviet Russia, CHILD 44 chronicles the crisis of conscience for secret police agent Leo Demidov (Tom Hardy), who loses status, power and home when he refuses to denounce his own wife, Raisa (Noomi Rapace(, as a traitor. Exiled from Moscow to a grim provincial outpost, Leo and Raisa join forces with General Mikhail Nesterov (Gary Oldman) to track down a serial killer who preys on young boys. Their quest for justice threatens a system-wide cover-up enforced by Leo’s psychopathic rival Vasili (Joel Kinnaman), who insists “There is no crime in Paradise.”
Child 44 opens on April 17.
Is this first look at Espinosa’s film at all appealing?