A Sloppily Put Together Crime Thriller

Rating: 4/10 (9 February 2017)

Child 44 follows a man who, after learning of the deaths of several children, begins a search for the man who murdered them, despite the fact that they were written off as accidents.
I love me a good crime thriller, really I do. And when I see a plot like this where the movie is brave enough to deal with a subject like murdering children, then it casts Tom Hardy, then color me interested.
Unfortunately, the actual plot doesn't start until the last forty minutes of this 137 minutes film. And even then, none of it is really all that interesting or even easy to follow. In fact by the time the plot starts rolling the script just stops trying to make sense. There's a scene that, under normal circumstances, would sound pretty awesome where a bunch of people start fighting and killing each other on a train cart, but in context there isn't actually any. The scene begins when some random expendable character pulls out a knife and tries to attack the protagonists. Somehow said protagonists know exactly what he's planning the second he stands up, and this big fight ensues. Sure, it's cool, but it doesn't make any sense. At that point I gave up on trying to understand the movie. The actual finding of the killer ends up being super anti- climatic and watered down, and it's just not engaging at all.
What about the 100 minutes leading up to the actual plot you may ask? Nothing happens. It's 'character development' where none of the characters are interesting and nothing that pulls, or more drags, the oncoming plot along are anything special. It's just a whole lot of nothing.
Overall Child 44 is kind of boring and dumb for the vast majority of it, yet somehow worse when the actual plot starts. In the end I would never recommend this colossal waste of time and talent.