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by Jeff Eason |
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David Cronenberg’s Eastern
Promises a Harrowingly Good Thriller
For the past two decades director David Cronenberg
has been making darkly daring movies that get under your
skin. Starting with films such as The Fly, Scanners,
Videodrome and Dead Ringers, Crononeberg has
created a career by filming the stuff of nightmares. But
he always manages to do so with a true feeling for storytelling
and imagery—as opposed to just trying to shock the
audience with a few well-placed scares.
Naomi Watts plays
Anna, a young nurse strangely attracted to Russian
underworld figure Nikolai, played by Viggo Mortensen,
in David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises.
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Vincent Cassel and
Viggo Mortensen give excellent performances as
Kirill and Nikolai, Russian thugs in the service
of Kirill’s mobster father, Semyon, in the
new movie Eastern Promises. |
Two years ago his storytelling abilities hit a new peak
with A History of Violence, starring Viggo Mortensen
as a seemingly ordinary Midwestern man caught up in a
case of mistaken identity with members of East Coast organized
crime syndicates. The film was a meticulous puzzle within
in a puzzle that demanded repeated viewings for hints
of foreshadowing. It was also a career launching pad for
Mortensen who was then dangerously close to being typecast
as the quiet brooding hero Aragorn from The Lord of
the Rings Trilogy.
Cronenberg and Mortensen reunite for the new film Eastern
Promises. Once again Cronenberg’s uniquely non-Hollywood
style and Mortensen’s quiet moral ambiguity are a
perfect fit as Eastern Promises takes us into the
world of Russian mobsters who have taken up residence
in London.
The films opens with 14-year-old prostitute Tatiana (Sarah-Jean
Labrosse) being rushed to the hospital where she dies
from hemorrhaging during childbirth. No one knows who
she is or where she came from and her newborn baby quickly
becomes a subject of fascination for midwife Anna (Naomi
Watts), a young woman who is herself a second-generation
émigré from Russia.
Anna finds a business card from an upscale Russian restaurant
in Tatiana’s diary and goes there seeking information
on Tatiana’s identity. Meanwhile her uncle Stepan
(Jerzy Skolimowski) reads Tatiana’s diary and discovers
that she was a young woman sold into forced prostitution
and held by one of the leaders of the Russian mob in London,
Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl) and his drunken son Kirill
(Vincent Cassel).
Semyon wants Tatiana’s diary and will do anything
to retrieve it from Anna. The family’s trusted driver
Nikolai (Mortensen) attempts to act as a mediator between
Anna and the Russian mob, but has his own secrets and
ambitions as an outsider who must become “family”
to Semyon and Kirill to achieve success in the Russian
underworld.
Eastern Promises, like A History of Violence,
takes the viewer into an alien yet completely believable
realm. Cronenberg, with his habit of filming on location
and away from Hollywood back lots, manages to throw the
viewer into this world from the opening scene and hold
him there for two hours. The dark London street scenes
are contrasted with the beautiful Russian restaurant and
the white clinical look of Anna’s hospital, for a
full immersion into Anna’s and Nikolai’s lives—so
close in proximity yet worlds away from each other in
philosophy.
Cronenberg’s aversion for all things Hollywood is
also apparent in the way he films the movie’s action
and sex scenes. Both are brutal but realistically portrayed
with blood flowing so dark as to be more black than red.
The scene in which Mortensen’s character is attacked
in a Russian bath house is one of the more graphically
violent ones found in a mainstream film, yet the reality
of it keeps the viewer from being simply grossed out.
The cast of Eastern Promises is a godsend of quality
actors who know how to utilize restraint. Mueller-Stahl’s
Semyon is a Godfather figure who can convey pure menace
with a simple sentence like “Your uncle, he lives
with you?” And Cassel’s Kirill is a childish
villain, inheriting an empire that is beyond his capabilities.
Still, he manages to rise up to the inevitability of the
situation when family and duty call.
Watts is an actress who impresses me with each additional
role. I thought she gave The Ring movies some gravity
where there was little to work with and perhaps single-handedly
kept King Kong from being a three-hour cartoon.
As Anna, Watts is brave yet vulnerable, dead-on with her
character assessments yet willing to give Nikolai a chance
to redeem himself.
Eastern Promises is a movie that will probably
be ignored at Oscar time because it is brutal and bloody
and filled with characters that are not exactly likeable.
That’s a shame because Cronenberg has created a strange
world and unusual story that is entertaining, enlightening
and real.
Eastern Promises is rated R for strong brutal and
bloody violence, some graphic sexuality, language and
nudity. It is currently playing at the Carmike 14 cinema
complex in Hickory.
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