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EASTERN PROMISES
Directed by David Cronenberg.
Produced by Paul Webster & Robert Lantos.
Written by Steven Knight.
Director of Photography: Peter Suschitzky.
Edited by Ronald Sanders.
Music by Howard Shore.
Released by: Focus Features.
Country of Origin: UK/Canada. 100 min. Rated R.
With: Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts, Vincent Cassel, Sinéad Cusack, Jerzy Skolimowski & Armin Mueller-Stahl.

It’s easy to make crime films these days. The template can be set from many influences, be they in direction or the screenplay (thanks Scorsese/Tarantino), but a lot of times we just get mere glimpses of the toll on characters from the atmosphere of dread and morbidity surrounding a crime family. Most often filmmakers rely on action sequences and violence to carry the story. For David Cronenberg, the genre is a vehicle for a story of conscience and alienated society, and of the everyday. As usual, Cronenberg is concerned with duality, as one has seen in everything from The Fly to Naked Lunch to Dead Ringers and, most recently, his masterpiece, A History of Violence. But it doesn’t seem that way in Eastern Promises, at least at first.

Naomi Watts plays Anna, a half-Russian midwife, who, one night, has to attend to an emergency birth in which a 14-year-old Russian girl dies on the spot. The baby lives. The teenager had a diary, and in it, detailed in Russian, are the desperate cries of a girl enveloped in London’s underground mob, which involves the disquietingly sinister boss Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl) and his volatile, homophobic son Kirill (Vincent Cassel). Anna confronts Semyon (as the book contains, after all, the address of the restaurant/base for Semyon) to see if he might be able to help her find the baby’s relatives and to translate the diary. Before he comes back to her with his translation of the text, Anna’s Russian mother (Sinéad Cusack) and uncle (Jerzy Skolimowski) become very concerned after translating some of it themselves.

Along with this, we’re privy to the testy and ultimately dangerously close bond between and Kirill and his driver, Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen). So close, in fact, that Kirill watches Nikolai have sex with a prostitute to prove to himself that Nikolai “ain’t queer” (Kirill has more than a small problem with his masculinity and what his sexual persuasion might be). Nikolai is looked upon like the good son by Semyon, who realizes his own flesh and blood is corrupt with an unhinged temper, which also adds to Kirill’s frustration of being looked down upon as the boss’s son.

Truth be told, Steven Knight’s screenplay may be a tinge tamer than Cronenberg die-hards might be used to. Yet it shouldn’t be shortchanged, as it’s a strong screenplay for characterizations, plot, and even a denouement that may at first seem to be a disappointment. The characters are all so vivid that the actors can’t play them any other way. Watts shines even when having little more to do than to look worried; Mortensen continues his collaboration with Cronenberg from History with a performance that’s even better, if one can believe that, with subtlety so convincing you can’t tell who’s who, at times, underneath those sun glasses; as a man riddled with so much insecurities that they spill over when he least expects it, Cassel is perfectly horrific as Kirill; and Mueller-Stahl, in maybe the best performance of the four main players, nails Semyon as a man who is all the more dangerous because of his calm nature. He only hints, with small glances, at the maliciousness of his true self.

Fear not all you fanboys looking for the visceral spirit that catapulted people from their seats during The Fly and Videodrome. Cronenberg still has it in him, even in an age of desensitization, to shock the hell out of a harden viewer such as myself. As any director dealing with the ugly nature of violence in everyday life and in organized crime, Cronenberg uses quick flashes of violence (throat slittings) for shock value. As for the much hyped steam room fight sequence, that too lives up to the buzz like no other such scene since Old Boy. It fits into place as the typical climax (if typical involves a naked Mortensen fighting off two nasty gangsters) gives way to an emotional one and a final shot so haunting one would swear it echoes The Godfather. Jack Gattanella
September 24, 2007