'Child 44' was a random choice of mine this week; I happened to see it available and noticed that it was about an MGB officer in Moscow in the last years of Stalin's rule. The reviews I have read of it have been rather negative in general, but as it happens it is exactly the sort of film that I tend to like. It is gritty and realistic in its portrayal of the sheer scale of the terror inflicted by irrational security organizations - like the MGB - that gripped the USSR in its last years under Stalin.
The film centres on the career of Leo Demidov - a MGB officer and former Red Army soldier - and his discovery that a serial killer is killing children along the rail route between Moscow and Rostov on Don. As Stalin has decreed that murder is a 'capitalist disease' so therefore cannot occur in the Soviet Union (which is historically what Stalin decreed as official doctrine) - because capitalism has been abolished - the murders are covered up as 'accidents' by the MGB.
Leo's wife Raisa is then denounced by one of his own junior officers Vasili Nikitin (played by Noel Kinnaman [who is jewish]) causing Leo to fall from grace when he refuses to be party to Raisa's denunciation. Due to his exemplary past service and the fact that he is a well-known public figure (as he was photographed hoisting the Soviet flag on the Reichstag in Berlin); he is exiled to a provincial militia instead of being executed.
In his exile he continues to hunt the serial killer and eventually tracks him down only for Vasili to execute the killer and then be killed by Leo and Raisa as he attempts to execute them as 'enemies of state', but in reality because he is jealous of Leo and in love with Raisa. By this time however Stalin has died and the MGB are being purged of those who committed excesses under Stalin's watch and Leo is brought back in by a MGB general to create a new murder investigation unit.
The acting in 'Child 44' is - in my view - excellent and the plot inventive; I especially liked the scene where the Soviet authorities crack a homosexual sex ring and then proceed to rip through its members like a knife through butter. I can understand people disapproving of the film, because it is gritty and realistic (there is no skimping on the brutality or the bad language). However at the same time I think with a historical understanding you are much better placed to appreciate this sort of film, especially as the atrocities committed by - and in the name of - the Soviet Union are so rarely dealt with in the movies.
Behind this focus on the Soviet Union not the Third Reich is - in all probability - the simple fact that director Daniel Espionosa is Swedish, it was largely produced by Ridley Scott (who isn't jewish) and the screenplay was written by Richard Price (who isn't jewish either). (1) One Greg Shapiro is listed as a co-producer, but doesn't seem to have a overly significant role in the film itself.
While the production companies - Worldview Entertainment and Scott Free Productions - are decidedly non-jewish entities as well. That said on the downside the distributor Lionsgate is owned and operated by jews such as its Co-Chairman Rob Friedman. (2)
Oh well I guess you can't have everything!
References
(1) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1014763/
(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Friedman