Context is everything in Child 44, Daniel Espinosa’s thriller based on the bestselling novel by Tom Rob Smith and produced by Blade Runner director Ridley Scott.

Without its Stalinist setting this would be another standard, if dazzlingly cast, police procedural.

You know the kind: wronged cop is sent down the ranks and fights to get to the bottom of grisly murders while uncovering corruption in his own force.

But the Soviet stylings are more than a quirk. The oppression, paranoia and sense of danger around every corner in Stalin’s bleak post-war USSR is palpable.

The threat of getting sent to a gulag or summarily shot after being branded a traitor or unfaithful to the party is very real.

If you are weary of the election and despairing the state of British democracy then here’s your antidote.

East Sheen’s Tom Hardy is magnetic as Leo Demidov, an orphan turned Red war hero and later a respected senior policeman.

In what stinks of a stitch-up by Joel Kinnaman’s greasy villain Vasili, Leo’s beloved wife Raisa (Noomi Rapace) is accused of being a traitor.

Rather than denounce her, Leo sticks by Raisa and they are both exiled to the far reaches of the Soviet Union.


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Shortly before exile, Leo’s best mate Alexei’s son is found dead by the railway. He was naked and tortured by Leo is forced by the party to tell Alexei he was hit by a train. There is no crime in Paradise, is Stalin’s line and everyone must stick to it.

Out in the wilderness, Leo is enlisted into the local force under New Cross actor Gary Oldman’s initially hostile General Nesterov.

And what do you know, a kid is found dead next to the railway in similar circumstances to Alexei’s son. And there’s another cover-up.

Against opposition from Moscow, and the determination of Kinnaman’s Vasili to nail him, Leo dedicates himself to getting to finding the killer.

The top cast is never less than convincing while Espinosa’s direction deftly captures the claustrophobic dread of Stalin’s totalitarian regime but the otherwise familiar serial killer plot barely feels big-screen worthy.

And while the actors are terrific and their Russian accents no doubt authentic, it doesn’t half grate after a couple of hours.

Child 44 is out Friday (April 17).

THREE out of five stars.