Eastern Promises

“Eastern Promises”

UK. 2007. Directed by David Cronenberg. Written by Steven Knight. Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts, Vincent Cassel, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Sinéad Cusack, Jerzy Skolimowski, Sarah-Jeanne Labrosse, Mina E. Mina, Aleksander Mikic, Joself Altin, Tatiana Maslany and Raza Jaffrey.

Rating: ★★★★

David Cronenberg’s latest film, Eastern Promises is like a photo negative of The Godfather. There are gestures of politeness and the family dinners within the large Mafia family but this film peels them away to examine if there are such things as loyalty and morality at all. And it also deserves the high praise and comparison with Francis Ford Coppola’s influential classic.

What distinguishes this film from other violent crime thrillers is that it introduces a person of decency into the story. She is Anna (Naomi Watts), a dedicated doctor in London who has just delivered a baby from a Russian teenage girl named Tatiana (Sarah-Jeanne Labrosse). The girl dies and the doctor sets out to find someone to translate a diary the girl left behind.

Led by a flyer found in the diary, she knocks on the door of a restaurateur, Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl). As played by the great Mueller-Stahl, the man is courteous to her but rarely has courtesy seemed so threatening. He kindly "requests" (really demands) her to hand him the diary that contains incriminating evidence about his mob family’s deals of illegal prostitution.

The other two key players in the story are Kirill (Vincent Cassel) and Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen with a convincing Russian accent), who will remind many of the sons of the Corleone family and more recently the crime family portrayed in Road to Perdition. The former is so much a loose cannon that it is doubtful he will become a proper leader if he does not self-destruct first. Nikolai is Semyon’s “driver” and a violent thug, too, but more reticent and aware of the code of loyalty in the Mafia. As he is gradually drawn to Anna, however, it becomes clearer that her safety and trust may depend on his examination of his own values.

The plot contains far more intriguing turns that I must not even hint at. What I will say is that the screenplay by Steven Knight (who wrote 2002's Dirty Pretty Things, another movie about a netherworld of illegal human trafficking, and Amazing Grace earlier this year) is simply ingenious in constructing its psychological suspense. The eventual revelations in the story are not based on actions and reactions but on peering unblinkingly into the clashes and turmoil of personalities and motivations.

The director David Cronenberg, who is best known for his earlier creepy, gothic horror films, has made yet another impressive, realistic examination of a violent world following A History of Violence. Some have criticized him of detaching himself too much from the material but I consider it his singular merit. Cinema is often considered an emotional medium of sensations and Cronenberg’s approach is a uniquely cerebral one that leaves the audience to intuit how they should feel about the darker human natures he unveils.

Much has already been written about that vicious fight between a nude Mortensen and two thugs in a public bathhouse. The scene especially stands out in its messiness and lack of choreography, which is a signature of Cronenberg who presents violence with almost a cold surgeon’s eye while forcing us to deal with the ugly results. This and other bursts of violence are shocking but not pervasive and never gratuitous.

At the center of the film are the sturdy performances by Naomi Watts and particularly Viggo Mortensen. Watts certainly does not get enough credit for the fine work she consistently provides in very different movies. Here, as the moral center of the film, she projects a fierce emotional strength in the face of potential physical danger and makes us understand why she would perhaps unwisely put herself in such a precarious situation. Meanwhile, Mortensen, as he was in A History of Violence, is stoically powerful as the film’s most enigmatic character who finds his loyalties tested when he meets this persevering woman who seeks order and security for this baby born from criminal sin.

Many films dealing with crime families including The Godfather romanticize them, presenting the unit in a sealed world where the members define their own code of morality. They conceal the true consequences of their criminal activities and how they kill to maintain such a lifestyle. Eastern Promises knows better.