'Child 44'

by

Rated R

Tom Rob Smith’s 480-page potboiler is adapted to the screen, starring Tom Hardy as a war hero turned undercover policeman in Stalin’s Russia. It’s 1952 and the Communist Party declares, “There can be no murder in Paradise.” To catch a serial killer of 44 children, Leo (Hardy) risks his job and a trip to the Gulag. His investigation is aided by Gary Oldman’s disgraced militiamen, but hindered by Leo’s complex relationship with fellow cop Vasili (Joel Kinnaman). Leo also frets about his fragile wife (Noomi Rapace), a schoolteacher whose friends keep getting “disappeared” by uniformed thugs. Examining the dogma and paranoia of its time and place, the tantalizing Child 44 may yield sequels since Smith wrote three books in this series.