Child 44

By Kurt Jensen, Catholic News service

newYORK (CNS) — The Stalin-era crime drama “Child 44” (Summit) is, alas, as murky as Siberian mud. That’s too bad, because the premise of the Tom Rob Smith novel on which the film is based — the first volume in a trilogy of thrillers — is sound.

In the Soviet Union in 1953, a serial killer is stalking young boys. The added twist in what would otherwise be a routine procedural is that such crime can’t officially exist. In fact, even reporting those goes against the party line because such deaths are viewed as a uniquely capitalist problem.

The relevant Stalinist dictum, repeated several times in the dialogue, is: “There can be no murder in paradise.”

This clash of vile reality with the state-enforced psychological unreality by which it must be ignored has potentially intriguing consequences. Everyone involved creates a web of lies, making for a multilayered plot that, in a better-crafted movie, would provide suspense — and, perhaps, a few moral lessons about life under tyranny as well.

There is at least an effort to provide context. In order for the audience to understand how these characters have been formed by cruelty, we’re given glimpses of Stalin’s man made famine in the Ukraine of the 1930s. The devastating legacy of World War II is also referenced.

None of it works. Director Daniel Espinosa and screenwriter Richard Price get bogged down in details, subplots and stereotyped apparatchiks — so much so that the picture appears not to move at all for the nearly unwatchable first hour of its daunting 137-minute running time.

Tom Hardy is Leo Demidov, a state security officer who was orphaned during the Ukraine disaster, and is now attempting to investigate the murders. His wife Raisa (Noomi Rapace), a teacher, has her own complicated past.

Demidov is exiled from Moscow when he finally makes progress on the case. Even then, however, he can’t let the killings go.

He gets help from sympathetic Gen. Mikhail Nesterov (Gary Oldman), but is constantly harassed by Vasili (Joel Kinnaman), a fellow security officer who wants to keep the crimes concealed.

In a somewhat ironic, not to say Orwellian, development, “Child 44” has been banned from theaters in the Russian Federation as well as in other successor states to the Soviet Union. The objection seems to be the negative light in which numerous characters are shown.

Apparently, there were no bad guys in paradise either.

The film contains gun and physical violence, a fleeting scene of semi-graphic sexual activity as well as occasional profanity and rough language. The Catholic News Service classification is A-III — adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R — restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

The Age of Adaline

By John Mulderig, Catholic News Service

NEW YORK (CNS) — Glossy proceedings follow on a silly premise in the serviceable romantic drama “The Age of Adaline” (Lionsgate).

Viewers willing to swallow its whopper of an opening  hypothesis will be somewhat rewarded by the movie’s endorsement of long-term loyalty. The pass it gives both to out-of-wedlock sexual behaviour and to the seedy implications of its own late plot developments, on the other hand, tends to spoil the recompense.

All of which moral nuance needs to be seen within the wildly improbable context of the lengthy — and yet, in one important aspect at least, unchanging — life of Adaline Bowman (Blake Lively).

As a 29-year-old widow in 1930s San Francisco, Adaline is involved in an auto accident that causes her temporary death. Yet, due to the unique circumstances surrounding the mishap — rare meteorological conditions, lightning-charged molecules, blah, blah, blah — she emerges from the trauma not only revived, but entirely immune to aging.

Adaline’s sui generis situation would seem, at first blush, to be an enviable one. But the fear of being confined and experimented on by prying government authorities, together with the awkward imbalance her perpetual youth would inevitably introduce into any amorous relationship, puts Adaline on the run — and leaves her more or less isolated — for the next  eight decades.

Jump forward four score years, however, and Adaline finds herself reluctantly falling for wealthy Silicon Valley tech whiz Ellis Jones (Michiel Huisman). This turn of events delights her now-elderly daughter, Flemming (Ellen Burstyn). But complications from Adaline’s long past threaten her contemporary chance  for commitment-based happiness.

The hurdles on her path to bliss arise because of Ellis’ connection to William (Harrison Ford), an old beau of Adaline’s from the Swinging Sixties. The bond between the two men — not to be detailed here for fear of a spoiler — has some distinctly unpleasant undertones. Yet these the script, co-written by J. Mills Goodloe and Salvador Paskowitz, blithely ignores.

Lively’s skillful portrayal of Adaline’s not-quite-resigned state of self-enforced loneliness helps to quell some of the skepticism inescapably inspired by director Lee Toland Krieger’s far-fetched yarn. Yet, while the ethical ins and outs of Adaline’s saga can be difficult to evaluate, given her tale’s vast divergence from real life, it’s a safe bet  that her story is not fit fare for the naturally youthful.

The film contains bedroom scenes implying benignly viewed nonmarital and premarital relationships, graphic but bloodless crash sequences and at least one instance each of profanity and crude language. The Catholic News service classification is A-III — adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 — parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.