Eastern Promises

Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts, Vincent Cassel, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Sinead Cusack

Dir. David Cronenberg
Scr. Steven Knight

David Cronenberg is widely regarded as a strange man. Look at his films – The Fly, Crash, eXistenZ, The Dead Zone. He’s used to dealing with the weird and the twisted. But, of late, Cronenberg has focussed his attention on the human condition – no mutations, no sci-fi; just people. Raw, flawed people. With A History of Violence, Cronenberg partnered with leading man Viggo Mortensen to make one of the best films of 2005. In Eastern Promises, Viggo and David get together again and explore evil and deceit and hope. For my money, Eastern Promises just might be one of the best movies of 2007.

Set in a dark and foreboding London, Eastern Promises follows the highly mysterious and extremely ruthless Nikolai (Mortensen), who works for a Russian crime family. Mortensen is the driver/henchman/hard man for the only son (Cassel) of the powerful and respected head of the family (Mueller-Stahl). Enter into the dangerous mix Anna (Watts), a midwife trying to find the family of a young Russian woman who dies while giving birth on her shift, who has evidence that could destroy this Russian crime-lord and his family.

There are some surprising and superbly scripted twists and turns thrown into the mix – I won’t go into the details, but let’s just say all is not as it seems (is it ever in the World of Cronenberg?!) What I can say is that Eastern Promises is satisfying without being too obvious – Cronenberg and writer Knight do not spoon-feed the audience but nor is this film so convoluted that one can’t keep up. I love that, in the end, we need not see all that has occurred to make the final shot a reality – we only need to know that the set-up was successful and the end goal came to fruition. This is a device film-makers should use more often. Eastern Promises could have easily been an hour longer, and immensely more boring, but Cronenberg and Knight made sure instead that everything made sense even if everything was not seen.

The performances in Eastern Promises are absolutely superb, without exception. Mortensen is brilliant playing a not-so-bad man in a very bad world. He is a wonderfully gritty and believable leading man. Apparently, in that method-actor way of his (this is the man who mended his own costume in Lord of the Rings), Mortensen was thrown out of a Russian bar in London for unsettling and intimidating the customers. He didn’t say a word – just ordered vodka and sat, looking menacing. Classic. Cassel is perfectly cast as the flawed and drunken heir to the crime organisation – in equal parts sinister and pathetic, a difficult mix to master. By far the scariest character in this film is played by Mueller-Stahl and this film is one of his best. He is absolutely excellent. Watts is very good and I was pleased to not hear her accent slip. She plays Anna with a nice blend of strength and desperation. A nice performance too from Cusack as Anna’s mother.

I have to warn those of you who aren’t fond of violence that this film has a couple of scenes I couldn’t watch – one at the beginning, which is mercifully short; the other in a bathhouse which involves a very naked Mortensen take on two Russian heavies. I can’t review this scene, sorry, because I just couldn’t watch it (being quite a wuss when it comes to knives being stabbed into people). I mainly couldn’t watch it because it’s Cronenberg – I just knew he would push the boundaries. I’ve read that it will go down as one of his most out-there scenes. But I don’t condemn the film for this scene – it is about the Russian mob, after all, and I don’t think the scene is out of place or gratuitous. Just watch out if you’re squeamish.

Eastern Promises is ultimately a tale of morality. It is chilling, utterly compelling, and completely surprising. I can’t wait for the next pairing of Cronenberg and Mortensen.

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Nikolai: Forget any of this happened. Stay away from people like me.