Tensionless and slow

Rating: 6/10 (31 August 2015)

Child 44 is a retelling of the story of the serial murders of Andrei Chikatilo. The cast is very much A-level (and the reason I saw this flick) with Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, Gary Oldman, Vincent Cassel and Charles Dance. But none of this matters much coz the movie is slow, drags on, has sideplots that make the story less streamlined and more convoluted. There are scenes that are meant to build the characters but only slow down the pace to a grinding halt and feel like they serve no essential purpose. There is almost no build of tension and it feels aimless. It's just crawls on for 137 mins till it reaches the end which feels very trivial and anticlimactic. So I'm not recommending this flick. I do recommend you check out 'Citizen X', a 1995 TV movie with Donald Sutherland and Stephen Rea which is about the same murders but done SO much better. The acting alone is just exquisite.