Leo Demidov (Tom Hardy) is a Ukrainian orphan, a survivor of
the great famine which killed millions in the early 1930s. He is adopted by a
Russian officer, becoming a soldier in WWII where he helps storm the Reichstag
and hoists the Soviet flag on the roof.
Post-war Leo becomes a MGB investigator in Soviet Russia.
Working for a government that takes a dim (and deadly) view of any one who
expresses a point of view contrary to their own. This is a country where
everyone is looking over their shoulder and with good reason. Life is very
cheap if you rub the wrong person up the wrong way.
Leo is appalled when the young son of his friend and fellow
agent Alexi (Fares Fares) is brutally murdered but his death is labelled ‘a railway
accident’ by the MGB. According to Stalin murder is a capitalist disease and officially
there are no crimes in the Soviet paradise. Leo is given the unpleasant task of
presenting the police report to the family.
During another MGB investigation, an alleged ‘spy’ reveals
under torture the names of seven ‘contacts’ and among them is Raisa (Noomi
Rapace), Leo’s wife. Now Leo has to investigate her.
For once he takes a stand and refuses to toe the party line.
For which he is demoted and the pair of them are exiled to a small Siberian town.
It could have been so much worse.
Still working for the MGB in Siberia, Leo gets involved in investigating
another child murder and this time he manages to convinces his superior,
General Mikhail Nesterov (Gary Oldman), that a serial killer is killing them. Together
they discover that there have been a total of 43 similar murders in the region
or 44, if you include Alexi’s son.
Leo and Raisa go well outside normal procedures in an effort
to catch the killer and it all ends in a good punch up.
The film effectively conjures up the grim, grey and
disturbing reality of Stalinist era Russia. Presumably this is why it was
banned in Russia. The film highlights a system which victimized its own people while
at the same time allowing many criminals to go unpunished.
The film does struggle to decide whether that is its purpose
or whether the murder investigation is its purpose. The result is a slightly
unsatisfying mixture of both with some dodgy accents and a good punch up or two.
Nicely depressing though.
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