Tom Hardy great..the movie not so much.

Rating: 7/10 (7 February 2016)

I must admit that I was a little disappointed with the film for it's confusing telling of the story. The film is based on a novel which I have never read, and as I was watching it, it was evident that the story had a lot of holes in it and at times the sequence of events just did not make sense. To start with, at the beginning of the film Leo at age 10 or 12 is shown playing with a coin that seemed to be of sentimental value to him but we are never shown the background story of that. Raisa, Leo's wife, at times is shown to hold resentment towards her husband who loves her dearly, and again there is no direct explanation to that. When Leo finally confronts the murderer towards the end, the murderer indicates that he knows Leo or knew him in the past but again there is no explanation for that.
Tom Hardy, as always, delivers great performance, owning the screen every time he shows up, captivating your attention with his characterization of a reluctant Russian soldier haunted by his childhood and the things he had to do in the line of duty. Noomi Rapace also portrays the character of Raisa beautifully and holds her own against Tom Hardy. Gary Oldman, on the other hand, did not do much in the film as his character was not given much space anyway, so I think any actor would be able to fill in his shoes.
The 7/10 that I'm giving this film is only in appreciation for the great performances by the two leads, if I was only rating the film I would give it 5. I don't know if the film was really meant to come out the way it did, but I'm willing to bet that the plot holes were caused by too much editing and cutting that resulted in the omission of important sequential events.