Child 44 (15)
three stars
Dir: Daniel Espinosa
With: Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace
Runtime: 137 minutes
TOM Rob Smith's bestselling novel comes to the screen with a suitably audience pulling pair of actors in the lead in the shape of Tom Hardy and Noomi Rapace. It is Moscow, 1953, and this being the workers' paradise of Stalin's Russia there is no such thing as murder. So when a child is found dead the police, including Leo Demidov (Hardy) file the matter under A for accident before going back to the state's main business of catching traitors. Director Daniel Espinosa does well to conjure up the grimness of the times, but it is at least half way through before all concerned wake up and remember they are meant to be making a thriller.
Gente de Bien (12A)
four stars
Dir: Franco Lolli
With: Brayan Santamaria, Carlos Fernando Perez
Runtime: 86 minutes
ERIC'S mother has to go away to work, so the ten-year-old is sent to live with a father he hardly knows and who is barely making a living as a handyman. An offer from dad's well-to-do employer for the two to come and spend Christmas initially delights Eric, but the two soon feel out of place among Colombia's richer citizens. Gente de Bien (Good Intentions) makes its points gently but firmly about the gulf between the haves and the have nots, and what it takes, or doesn't take, to fill it.
The Town that Dreaded Sundown (15)
two stars
Dir: Alfonso Gomez
With: Addison Timlin, Veronica Cartwright
Runtime: 84 minutes
THE town in question is Texarkana, a place once blighted by a killer who murdered sweethearts by moonlight. Generations on, the horrors have passed into folklore, but, what's this, is the killer on the loose again? The title will be familiar to those who recall the 1976 horror original. Everyone else can share in the deja vu feeling as one predictable move after another is pulled.
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