Communist Paradise murder thriller that has its moments

Rating: 5/10 (15 August 2015)

On the face of it this is actually a well made film. The plot is that Hardy playing Leo Demidov is a State Security officer in Stalin's Russia, he has a chequered past and was supposedly at the fall of the Reichstag in Berlin at the close of WW II- the historical inaccuracies around this part are woeful – but in the need for a good story – thoroughly acceptable. For example -one soldier is too scared to fire his machine gun – now they have just fought across half a continent to have gotten the colly wobbles at this point is a bit disingenuous and that is no matter how much it helps to contrive the plot later. The flag bit is also completely made up.
Then we move on to the present day and he sort of uncovers a child murderer serial killer – but as the political wheel turns he is forced to denounce his wife as some sort of spy. Refusing to do so he is demoted and sent to some arse end of nowhere place where he meets Gary Oldman and decides to carry on the search for the killer.
Now this is from the trilogy by Tom Rob-Smith and out of necessity they have missed a lot out in this 132 minute film; but you still get the basic gist. The period detail is great, the acting all passable – the false Russian accents are OK in places. A word in defence of the actors – they at least try to do the accents but like many I prefer the original language. Also people are a bit too emotional in places – this was Stalinist Russia you were only allowed to get emotional when either tractor production targets were exceeded or there was a bumper turnip harvest – fact!
That aside it is watchable it has a fair bit of plot but not a lot of chemistry and there are times when you wonder what their motivation is or what the point is. This could be down to direction or editing, but this ends up being a film where it is lesser than the sum of its parts. It is still an OK watch – hence my rating.