By Kenneth Turan

FILM: Child 44
CAST: Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, Joel Kinnaman
DIRECTION: Daniel Espinosa

At times awkward and self-conscious, this despairing police tale starring Tom Hardy and set in the USSR during the last days of dictator Josef Stalin manages to muster enough punch to hold our interest.
Child 44 is based on a 2008 novel by Tom Rob Smith that sold 1.5mn copies and was potent enough to be long-listed for the Booker Prize. Not all the factors that made the book a success have translated to the film intact, but a key one has, and it’s that singular setting.
As directed by Daniel Espinosa, Child 44 takes us back to the drab grimness of the Soviet Union in 1953. Shot in the Czech Republic by Oliver Wood, the film not only re-creates dreary physical locations but also exposes the rotten, harrowing nature of a paranoid political system that viewed everyone as a potential traitor suitable for exile or execution.
Even worse for those with a police function and a sense of justice, the Soviet system apparently had no interest in certain types of crime. Because Stalin decreed that murder was a disease of capitalism that, by definition, could not be present in a Soviet society (“There is no murder in paradise” is a line heard several times), serial killers could operate with impunity. Their nefarious deeds would not be investigated as such because officially they did not exist.
A gifted director especially expert in run-and-gun action movies, Espinosa offers a few strong action sequences, but he’s become bogged down in this film’s extensive narrative and larger societal themes. As a result, Child 44 sometimes plays like a schizophrenic cross between Dr Zhivago and The Silence of the Lambs, which is not necessarily a good thing.
Child 44 begins with a flashback to the horrors of the starvation-plagued Ukraine of 1933, and we see a small boy escape from an orphanage. He is adopted by a Soviet soldier and given a new name: Leo Demidov.
Cut to Berlin, 1945. Leo ends up posing as a victorious Red Army fighter waving a flag atop the Reichstag (a tribute to the celebrated photo by Yevgeny Khaldei) and becoming an instant national hero and emblem of Soviet courage.
Now it is 1953, and Leo (Tom Hardy) lives in Moscow, where he’s an officer of the MGB, the state’s internal police, surrounded by the same comrades who fought with him in the war, including loyal Alexei (Fares Fares) and the completely psycho Vasili, who would just as soon shoot you as look at you.
The Soviet system has been good to Leo, and he believes in it completely. So much so that he can’t see what would be obvious to a child: Raisa (Noomi Rapace), the wife he adores, is bored with their marriage and with him.
Leo has a job only a true believer could hold. He has to arrest an ever-growing list of people considered disloyal and ignore the fact that in a society where coerced confessions are standard issue, accusations alone are as good as death sentences.
Suddenly, however, all the flaws of the Soviet system get personal for Leo in a pair of interlocking ways that totally whipsaw him.
First, his beloved Raisa is accused of treason, and Leo’s devious superior, Maj Kuzmin (Vincent Cassel), assigns the investigation to him. Almost simultaneously, Leo becomes convinced that a serial killer is at work torturing and killing small boys.
It would be nice to report that Hardy, one of England’s top actors rises to the occasion as a man who gets so obsessed with justice he puts his life and career in jeopardy, but that is not the case.
Hardy pushes too hard in this part, overdoing both the Russian accent and the emotions. Fortunately, co-stars such as the reliable Gary Oldman, as a provincial official who is one of Leo’s few allies, are more discreet and more effective.
Problematic but involving, Child 44 offers a picture of what individuals did to survive in a world turned upside down. The film’s singular premise allows it to survive its various shortcomings, but it is a near-thing. — Los Angeles Times/TNS

DVD courtesy:
Kings Electronics, Doha

Story of friendship

FILM: Teen Beach 2
CAST: Maia Mitchell, Grace Phipps, Ross Lynch, Jordan Fisher,
DIRECTION: Jeffrey Hornaday

Teen Beach 2 is a 2015 Disney Channel Original Movie and the sequel to the 2013 film Teen Beach Movie.
Teen Beach 2 picks up right where the first one ended — three months later to be exact. The summer is coming to an end, but will the friendships last?
In Teen Beach 2, it is time for Mack (Maia Mitchell) and Brady (Ross Lynch) to head back to school and do everything in their power to make sure that isn’t the case. So, how’d it measure up to the first movie?
To be a good Disney movie, you need three things: fun music, cute actors and a relatable story line. And . . . a school dance. Teen Beach 2 has all of these.
The film basically turns into the story of friendship and being yourself — two things super important to everyone, at every age.
With Ross’s hair flips, Maia’s swag, and the old gang back with all that singing, this movie actually turns out very cute, and better than first.— EL

Dismal logic

FILM: The Factory
CAST: John Cusack, Dallas Roberts, Jennifer Carpenter, Mae Whitman
DIRECTION: Morgan O’Neill

It says a lot for The Factory that it has been released only after an extended period gathering dust on a shelf. Both the story and presentation are below par.  
A serial killer is loose in Buffalo, New York, targeting young prostitutes. His name is Gary (Dallas Roberts), a catering cook fostering an obsession with family, utilising his basement to keep and brainwash his captives.
Detective Mike Fletcher (John Cusack) has been working the case for years now, studying the missing women without a breakthrough, frustrating his partner, Kelsey (Jennifer Carpenter).
Dealing with a troubled family life with high-maintenance teen daughter Abby (Mae Whitman), Mike is lost in his investigation, unaware that his girl is dealing with a few personal issues she’s afraid to address.
When Gary mistakes Abby for a hooker and kidnaps her, the ensuing missing persons search brings Mike to the edge, obsessively working the clues to rescue his child, which eventually finds him tossed off the case. For Abby, the nightmare begins in Gary’s dungeon, finding herself chained up and surrounded by the madman’s harem, forced to join this wretched “family”.
Poor taste and dismal logic seem to be the film’s hallmarks.

DVDs courtesy:
Saqr Entertainment Stores, Doha