Genre: Spy/Thriller/Drama
Premise: In the Soviet Union, post World War 2, a Soviet
agent suspects a man of killing and mutilating dozens of children.
About: This script is based on the book of the same
name. This 2008 draft (which made the
Black List) was written by Richard Price, who wrote many episodes of The
Wire. The part-time novelist also wrote
the films, Ransom, Sea of Love, and The Color Of Money.
Writers: Richard Price (based on the novel by Tom Rob
Smith)
Details: 136 pages
I’ve been hearing about Child 44 forever. Writers have told me they love the book.
Writers have told me they love the script.
Writers have told me they love love LOVE this story.
But I’m not going to lie.
Spies? Russia? The 1940s?
I’d rather ingest copious amounts of bath salts on top of the John
Hancock building. And by the way, these
drug dealers are getting lazy. Can’t you come up with a better drug name than
“bath salts.” That sounds like something
your grandma rubs on herself every day at 2:30pm.
Where were we? Oh,
yeah, the Soviet Ukraine in the 1930s.
This is where we meet a bunch of kids chilling out in the middle of a
forest. These kids are known as the
alphas (the older ones) and the betas (the younger ones). I guess back then, food was scarce in Russia,
so these abandoned children were left to scour the forest for happy meals. The Alphas made the Betas do all the
hunting. And when they didn’t come back
with goodies, they tortured them by making them squeeze sponged water all over
themselves. Not sure how this was
considered torture but it might have been an early precursor to
waterboarding.
600 unimportant character names later and it’s 1951. Our hero, Leo Demidov, is 28 years old and
lives with his super-hot wife, Raisa, who doesn’t like him. Leo’s kind of arrogant though and not privy
to her feelings. He assumes she’s having
the time of her life. I mean, who
doesn’t love Leo?
Leo works for something called the ‘MGB,’ which I’m guessing
is an early version of the KGB. He
snuffs out people who are sympathetic to the opposition and makes them
disappear. BY KILLING THEM. Leo doesn’t exactly love the henchman lifestyle,
but hey, Soviets got bills too yo.
But then Leo gets a shocking assignment. He’s told to survey someone the government is
certain is a spy. HIS WIFE. Duh duh DUHHHH! Yup, turns out Grumpy Raisa
is hanging around some shady Westerners, reading books that talk about freedom
n’ shit.
So Leo starts looking into his wife, a wife he realizes he’s
never known, and when pressure comes down from the big guys to take her out, he
decides to stick with her instead. The
MGB doesn’t take kindly to this and banishes he and his wife to another town or
something.
It’s there where Leo comes across a dead mutilated child in
the woods. This isn’t the first time
he’s run into a dead mutilated child actually.
He saw another one back at his old town.
Since both bodies were found by the train tracks, though, the assumption
is that they met their fate via the front of a choo-choo train. But Leo suspects there’s a lot more going on
here.
So Leo starts looking into their deaths and eventually
learns that dozens of dead children have been found near train tracks over the last
few years, all of which have gone down as accidents of some sort. Leo realizes that there’s a serial killer on
the loose. So he goes to his bigshot
employees and tells them he wants to look into this, but nobody wants to deal
with a child serial killer in the government.
There are way bigger fish to fry.
So Leo divides his time between reconnecting (or connecting
period) with his wife and investigating these child murders. It’s a tough road for our hero since no one
wants him to do either, including his wife.
Then again, if it were easy, we wouldn’t have a movie now, would
we?
The short and skinny about Child 44? I didn’t like it. Not so much because of the writing. The writing was solid. I mean, we have conflict coming at as from
almost every direction here (conflict coming from the party, from his wife,
from his division re: investigating the murders) but my main problem with it
was that Child 44 felt like two totally different movies.
You have two hooks here.
You have an MGB agent who learns that his wife may be a traitor. That’s
its own movie. Then you have a child
serial killer in 1950s Soviet Union.
That’s its own movie.
By combining these two, the script doesn’t know what it
is. But more importantly, one of these
storylines undercuts the other. There is
so much emphasis put on whether Raisa is a traitor, that the serial killer
storyline feels like an afterthought.
I’m serious. It honestly feels
like something to fill up time. I don’t
think you can have a major serial killer plot in your movie and have it be the second
most important thing your hero deals with.
On top of that, this script takes FOREVER to get going. I guess the whole “Alpha and Beta” flashback
opening was unique, but I kept asking myself, “Did we really need to burn 10
pages on that?” It is sort of paid off
in the end, but I don’t know. I fell
asleep 3 times during the opening act. That’s
not a good sign.
I’m trying to figure out why people like this script so much
and I guess it comes down to a few things.
First, it’s very specific. This
isn’t like tomorrow’s script where everything feels made up on the spot. There’s a texture and a richness to this universe
that’s all very…explored. And to some,
those dual plotlines complement each other, creating a challenging
non-traditional storyline.
But to me they…don’t.
And a few other things didn’t work for me either. First of all, I hated Raisa. She was so bitter and boring. I mean, you hated Carolyn from American
Beauty, but at least she had personality.
At least she was funny. Raisa is
just…super boring. Why am I rooting for
a guy to reconnect with some bitch who hasn’t smiled in 10 years?
And as far as the murder investigation went, there was
something very “low-stakes” about it. At
first the implication was that the government was covering these killings
up. That had me intrigued. “Why?” I wanted to know. Then we learn that there’s no cover-up at
all. The government just doesn’t want to
waste resources on child killings. Hmmm,
I guess I’ve been conditioned through Hollywood filmmaking to want more there
but, even if I hadn’t, I’D STILL WANT MORE THERE.
And motivation-wise, there was something missing. Why did Leo want to solve these child murders
so much? I suppose wanting justice for
murdered children SHOULD be enough, but from a movie motivation point-of-view,
I didn’t understand why Leo was the ONLY person who cared about it. What was it in him that wanted to
solve all these murders whereas everyone else could care less? Why why why?
I wanted to know why and the explanation I got was a guy sort of doing
his job.
I also wanted to get to know at least ONE of these kids. Then I could’ve had a personal connection
with them and cared about them being avenged.
We didn’t get to know the captured girl in Silence Of The Lambs THAT
well, but we got to know her enough to care for her life. Well, I actually know some people who were
rooting for Buffalo Bill in that movie.
But that’s a review for another time.
And why, exactly, when Leo sticks up for his wife – who’s
possibly a spy – do they just send him off to another town? Aren’t we supposed to fear this regime? Isn’t
this the terrifying Communist Soviet Russia???
If the stakes are going to be high, shouldn’t we fear death? But the big punishment for being a spy is,
apparently, having to move 20 miles out of town?? I don’t know.
That doesn’t seem very scary to me.
I didn’t really get any of this script. I’m sure the spy-heads will tell me why I’m
wrong. I know a certain recently sold
screenwriter who LOVES this script. And boy do I know what it feels like to love something that much. But
I just couldn’t get into Child 44.
[ ] what the hell
did I just read?
[x] not for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Get into your story as late as
possible. I didn’t see the point of
wasting the first 10 pages on a flashback that introduced a dozen characters
we’d never see again and cover backstory that wasn’t entirely necessary in
understanding our main character. I
guess you could argue that it’s a setup to the ultimate payoff in the end (of
the murderer’s motivation) but you could’ve set that up in a number of less
intrusive ways.
What I learned 2: Be wary of competing concepts in a
story. It’s best to stay with one, or
else the two will overshadow each other. Is this a movie about an agent who
learns his wife is a spy? Or is it about
an agent who’s inspecting a child serial killer? I still don’t know. Dueling concepts can sometimes work if
there’s a natural thematic connection between the two, but I never saw the
connection between a spy wife and a child murderer.