It's...hmmmmmm...

Rating: 6/10 (19 April 2015)

I went to see this film yesterday and... well... it could've been better. When I say better however, i'm not saying the film bad. It's pretty good but there are many small faults that pulled the film down.If you think about it, not many films have been made by Hollywood set in Stalin's Russia, I went into the cinema hoping this would be good through being set somewhere new to Hollywood that personally haven't seen in a film before. However the director of the film did a poor job to a film that was set up well and had an excellent leading actor in Tom Hardy.
What pulled the film down was its directing most of all, many of fight scenes were done in a poorly executed shaky cam which made it impossible to tel who was shooting or hitting who. This was made further difficult by the final scene with the fight in the mud, that you could tell which was was Tom Hardy. The poor directing was further evident with an overly long running, and after a 2 hour wait to see the killer, the last 15 minutes roughly are very rushed and full of plot holes including the Russian soldiers finding Tom Hardy and Noomi Rapace in the forest at the end after not being in Moscow in the shot before.
Furthermore, the dodgy Russian accents take the realism of the film away and the film doesn't capture the true brutality in Stalin's Russia which could of been explored.
However the film is saved y Tom Hardy's excellent performance which was unconventional to a movie antagonist through showing traits of the bad guy in film. Plus although the setting could of been explored more, the originality of it compared to most Hollywood films makes the film interesting to watch.
To of made this film better,more time should of been taken in using the platform the cast and setting could of given, but were restricted in poor directing. As the film carries so many small flaws i give it 6 out of 10. This film we be forgotten in 10 years sadly and no trilogy will be made from the books meaning this will be the last time we will see this again.