A taxing slog through Russia

I don't know what the F-word looks like in Cyrillic, but Tom Hardy, speaking English with a heavy Russian accent in the Stalin-era serial-killer thriller Child 44, drops the epithet so many times it practically becomes a joke.

Believe me, you take what levity you can from this unrelentingly grim, plodding, and close-to-incoherent adaptation of Tom Rob Smith's best-selling mystery. Hardy is military police detective Leo Demidov, a survivor of (cue the prologues) the 1933 Holodomor, or hunger exterminations, which left him an orphan, and of the carnage of World War II, which left him a hero.

Now, it is 1953 in Moscow, and a title card tells us "there is no murder in paradise," a point reiterated repeatedly, with no littler irony, as the mutilated bodies of children pile up along the train tracks between Moscow and Rostov. Demidov's bosses will not acknowledge the killings. Murder is "a capitalist disease," they insist. Therefore, these children must have died by accident. Never mind the witnesses who saw them being lured off by a man. Never mind the precise surgical nature of their fatal wounds.

Adapted by the novelist and screenwriter Richard Price (did he drop all those F-bombs?), Child 44 was directed by Daniel Espinoza, the jumpy Swede of Easy Money (original title: Snabba Cash) and the Liam Neeson thriller Safe House. There isn't a second of silence in all of Child 44; when composer Jon Ekstrand's score isn't busy thumping and bumping with portent, steam engines are squealing into stations, or guns boom, or people scream. Street sounds bleed into bedrooms and kitchens, a steady thrum of doom.

Joining Hardy for this misconceived malarkey is his pal from the Brooklyn heist drama The Drop, Noomi Rapace. She's Raisa, Leo's wife, a schoolteacher - a schoolteacher pegged as a traitor, shunted off to the hinterlands with husband in tow. Easy Money (and The Killing) star Joel Kinnaman is Leo's nemesis, a snake-eyed army officer. He resents Leo's authority and he covets Leo's wife.

The not-to-be-sneezed-at cast also includes Gary Oldman (a Rostov general), Vincent Cassel (Leo's commanding officer), and Paddy Considine (the less said, the better). To a man, the actors deliver their lines with all the flair of Boris Badenov, pulling on their 1950s wardrobes, climbing into 1950s cars, and jumping out of 1950s trains - then tumbling down toward the trees, landing with a big thwack.

Directed by Daniel Espinosa. With Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, Joel Kinnaman, Gary Oldman and Paddy Considine. Distributed by Lionsgate.

Running time: 2 hours, 17 mins.

Parent's guide: R (violence, profanity, adult themes).

Playing at: Area theaters.EndText

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