Overly Convoluted Mess

Rating: 3/10 (28 July 2015)

If you want to see this movie - done right - watch "Citizen X," the HBO movie that supposedly 'inspired" Child 44, but outshines it in every conceivable way.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112681/?ref_=nv_sr_4
Anyone will be able to see where Child 44 borrows from Citizen X, but where Citizen is a true-to-the-facts, utterly chilling story about one of the worst serial killers in history, Andrei Chikatilo, the telling of which is so much more creepy and horrifying for its simplicity and lack of "Hollywood" style embellishment.
Child 44 tries far too hard to be too many things, and fails at them all. The child murders, which are supposed to be the story's catalyst, end up feeling brushed over and tacked on, while the real-life bureaucracy and just plain pigheadedness of the government-in-denial that was almost complicit in many of the deaths due to inaction, becomes a confused and unreal spy/love story/rivalry conundrum that ends up feeling contrived and unfocused.
In recommending Citizen X to people, as I often have over the years, as possibly the best movie about a serial killer ever made, it is for precisely all the reasons where Child 44 goes wrong. Citizen X is wonderful writing and acting, is frightening and believable, a true look at a human turned monster, because it isn't overdone and pumped full of clichés and contrived action.