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.

3:10 to Yuma

“3:10 to Yuma”

USA. 2007. Directed by James Mangold. Screenplay by Halsted Welles, Michael Brandt and Derek Haas. Based on the short story by Elmore Leonard. Starring: Russell Crowe, Christian Bale, Ben Foster, Peter Fonda, Logan Lerman, Dallas Roberts, Alan Tudyk, Gretchen Mol and Benjamin Petry.

Rating: ★★★★

There was a time when Westerns engaged audiences on the level of a simple morality play where audiences knew who the good and bad guys were and were excited and entertained by watching the latter get their comeuppance. Then came along Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch, which removed that moral façade and showed how real violence was not as sanitized. Everyone was a victim of the chaos and bloodshed, and no one, good guy, bad guy, or innocent bystander, was immune to the scarring, whether physical or emotional. In the Westerns that followed, the violence combined with more reflective and intellectual dialogue to express morally complex ideas about the human condition.

James Mangold’s 3:10 to Yuma is a masterful revisionist update of the classic western and I mean “revisionist” in the best sense of the word. That is to say, not only does the film unearth a seemingly forgotten genre but it also deconstructs the familiar elements to their spare parts to explore the darker weathers of human nature and the triumph of good that can arise in between. That I completely forgot there was a previous adaptation of this Elmore Leonard story is a testament to how great this film is.

The movie opens in the home of Dan Evans (Christian Bale), a man seeking to rebuild his own life after he lost a leg in the Civil War. He is tired of the looks of shame and disdain from his wife, Alice (Gretchen Mol) and kids, William (Logan Lerman) and Mark (Benjamin Petry) and he is barely trying to keep his ranch afloat in the face of overdue loans. That chance seems to arrive to him when he seizes the rare and perilous opportunity to transport a captured infamous robber and murderer, Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) to his prison train for a payment of 200 dollars that will help cover his debts.

Dan’s posse includes Doc Potter (Alan Tudyk), Byron McElroy (Peter Fonda), a bounty hunter who has a personal vested interest in bringing Wade to justice, and others who work under railroad worker, Grayson Butterfield (Dallas Roberts). Wade has his own posse now led by his right-hand man, Charlie Prince (Ben Foster), who gazes with snaky eyes at Dan’s crew and follow them to make sure they never make it to the 3:10 train to Yuma, which will transport Wade to prison where he will immediately be hanged.

The film’s focus is really on Dan and Ben, two opposed men who know they cannot trust each other but may have to anyway and even bare their own souls to fight for their lives. Ben is a scarier criminal because he can actually intellectualize about his evil deeds with erudite irony. He is smarter than anyone else can catch on and intuits his situations so quickly that it dumbfounds everyone including himself.

His philosophizing of his hedonistic behavior becomes a source of temptation for Dan, the hero who fears what hidden darker side he will unleash in his quest to redeem his status by bringing Ben to justice. That’s made more complicated when William sneakily tags along and seems eerily fascinated by Ben’s machismo posturing. Such ideas bring greater depth to the gun battles that happen in between where Ben’s violent nature can hurt but also help the livelihood of the posse against other unforeseen enemies.

To make this complex character study come to life, director James Mangold has rightly picked great actors like Christian Bale and Russell Crowe to embody them. There is good acting you recognize and greater acting you hardly notice and when Bale and Crowe exchange dialogue, we reflect on the meaning of the words instead of realizing how well they are really delivering them. Their eloquent conversations make us hardly anticipate another action scene and have us guessing who will be the last man standing.

Both actors really disappear into their characters but the real surprise is Ben Foster who has a silent, steely gaze that peers into the camera. His performance is crucial to establishing the dread that forces people to succumb to their weaker and more survivalist natures. That only becomes truer when some members of the escorting posse make surprising decisions based on the pressure Foster weighs down.

James Mangold’s directorial efforts vary wildly from cop thrillers like Cop Land to Girl, Interrupted, Walk the Line, and now this. He directs his action sequences here with timing and precision but he is always more interested in exploring the concept of desperation within his characters. Watching this film, the best he has ever directed, finally made me understand the common theme that runs through all of his vastly different films – people who seek balance and stability despite their dissatisfaction with their place in the world.

The best Westerns have the unique ability above any other genre to visually show pages of commentary on the complicated nature of morality in a violent world and 3:10 to Yuma does just that with great brevity. Its most insightful message is how after all the shooting and mayhem, the man who can fight with his words rather than his guns or his fists is the one who truly wins.

Stardust

“Stardust”

USA. 2007. Directed by Matthew Vaughn. Screenplay by Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn. Based on the novel by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess. Starring: Charlie Cox, Claire Danes, Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert De Niro, Sienna Miller, Nathaniel Parker, Kate Magowan, Mark Strong, Jason Flemyng and Peter O’Toole.

Rating: ★★★

It’s been some time since a real fairy tale like The Princess Bride has hit theaters and Stardust is a creatively crazy one. There may be one too many imaginative ideas in this fantasy mix of swashbuckling, evil witches, greedy princes, and, yes, even a cross-dressing pirate but the ambitious concoction is more than refreshing in a summer filled with sequels and retreads. And the central story breathes renewed life into the concept of stargazing.

The film, based on the novel by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess and narrated by the duly recognizable voice of Ian McKellen, introduces Tristan Thorn (Charlie Cox) who lives in England with his father, Dunstan (Nathaniel Parker). He is initially unaware, however, that his mother, Una (Kate Magowan) was actually a slave girl in a fantasy land from beyond called Stormhold.

He is at first smitten with Victoria (Sienna Miller). In order to dissuade her from marrying another man whom he loses to in a pitiful duel, he sets out to retrieve a shooting star that they see falling in Stormhold. With the star will arrive a rare stone whose bearer will determine the next heir to the king (Peter O’Toole).

That star is Yvaine (Claire Danes), a beautiful young woman with long, flowing blonde hair reminiscent of none other than Goldilocks. Tristan finds her after his father tells him about a magic candle that was left behind by his mother and uses it to cross over to Stormhold. He is not the only one who is seeking for her, however, including no less the seven princes greedy for the stone she is wearing and a group of evil witches, Lamie (Michelle Pfeiffer), Empusa (Sarah Alexander) and Mormo (Joanna Scanlan) who want to perform a ritual on her to attain immortal youth.

Amidst this adventure, Tristan will, of course, come to protect Yvaine from the greedy princes and the witches and he will eventually realize that he loves Yvaine and not Victoria. After all, as the old saying goes, how can he resist a shining star that is literally aligned to him? It’s a nice touch that she literally glows even brighter when she feels the emotion of love. It also helps that Cox and Danes have a sweet and natural onscreen chemistry together, even if their fairy tale innocence is marred a bit by the fact that their characters actually fall into bed.

As with most fairy tales, however, the side characters are the scene stealers and the filmmakers went for top-shelf actors to cast these roles. First mention goes to Robert De Niro as that transvestite pirate who trains Tristan in swordplay and Yvaine in waltzing. He scores enormous laughs whether cross-dressing in his closet in the midst of a ship attack or utters the film’s funniest line, “Do you ever try to remove blood stains from silk shirts? Nightmare!” There is also some morbid humor in how the greedy princes turn into lingering ghosts complaining about their fates. Michelle Pfeiffer, meanwhile, gets to play a juicier, meaner and slightly more risqué rendition of the evil Queen from Snow White, much to the chagrin and jealousy of her sisters and our amusement. That leads to a truly loopy fight scene where Cox enters a swashbuckling duel with a dead body controlled by Pfeiffer via a voodoo doll.

The film may not quite achieve the sweep of The Princess Bride with its side plots (De Niro’s character, funny as he is, is really an obvious deus ex machina) but its abundance of rich ideas and laughs is worth cherishing. And Shakespeare the playwright would have been vastly amused by his own Romeo & Juliet and Hamlet influences in the story. His own populating of colorful characters might not have been a perfect fit for a fairy tale but if he had ever penned one, it might have turned out as something like Stardust.