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Harvey Karten's Reviews

Review: Eastern Promises

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#1 of 1 Posted 9/16/07 4:40 PM

From harveykarten Posts 744 Last Nov-19
To All [Msg # 22642.1 ]

EASTERN PROMISES

Reviewed for CompuServe by Harvey S. Karten
Focus Features
Grade: B+
Directed by:    David Cronenberg
Written By: Steve Knight
Cast:   Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts, Vincent Cassel, Armin Mueller-Stahl
Screened at: AMC Lincoln Sq., NYC, 9/16/07
Opens: September 14, 2007

There are gangster stories and then there are David Cronenberg’s gangster stories. Cronenberg, known for imaginative psychological pics like “The Fly” and “Dead Zone,” and for his most audience-accessible work, the revenge tale “A History of Violence,” can be trusted to put his own recognizable spin on anything he tackles. With “Eastern Promises,” for example, he gives the impression that he’s following the trendy look into the sex trade, which this year is depicted nicely, if in an exploitative manner, in Marco Kreuzpainter’s movie, “Trade.” Cronenberg, working with Steve Knight’s subtly constructed script, gives us a view of a disturbed, fourteen-year-old woman who had been smuggled into the clutches of the Russian mafia in London. He is more interested, however, in examining relationships within the ring of organized crime, especially those between its leader and his son, and the leader and the driver; and that between a midwife who delivers the baby of the unfortunate fourteen-year-old and the chauffeur. A mood of dread and danger is sustained almost throughout the story.

Cronenberg wastes no time getting into graphic violence: we in the audience are virtually inside a barber shop when a customer receives a closer shave than he’d ever willingly pay for. Not long after that a pregnant girl arrives at a pharmacy bleeding profusely, asking for help, though the pharmacist’s suggestion of methadone would hardly solve her problem. Rushed to the hospital, the dying girl gives birth with the help of a midwife, Anna (Naomi Watts), whose maternal instinct has been sufficiently nurtured to encourage her curiosity about the young woman’s origins. Her search for the address of the girl’s family in Russia or Ukraine leads her increasingly into the world of restaurant owner and mafia leader Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl), his vicious, psychotic son Kirill (Vincent Cassel), and the mafia driver, Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen).

A generous assortment of brutal acts, all without the need for special effects or car chases or exploding buildings, evokes gasps and shouts of pain from the audience: Nikolai clips the fingers from a corpse; a newborn baby is about to be thrown into the Thames to drown; Nikolai is challenged to prove his heterosexuality by following an order to rape one of the sex slaves being kept in a mafia hideout; best of all, a completely naked Nikolai takes on two fully-dressed and armed hoodlums from a rival mafia gang inside a bathhouse, a scene that’s likely to bring out an audience far wider than the typical one accustomed to Cronenberg’s eccentric, stylized output.

Viggo Mortensen, apparently a Cronenberg favorite since his role as an avenging angel in the director’s “A History of Violence,” shows his mettle once again by a convincing job as a potential partner for Anna while at the same time a man whose apparently loyalty to mafia chieftain Semyon becomes increasingly tested. Peter Suschitzky’s lenses take us into a London a world away from the tourist circuit, though Semyon’s elegant restaurant would be a natural attraction for Russian visitors. One gets the impression that Semyon’s happiness comes from putting his ill-gained fortune into his establishment, where on one evening he happily conducts a rendition of folk songs for some aging, expatriate women celebrants. A heavy price must be paid, as death looms over the heads of Anna, Kirill, Semyon, Nikolai--and Anna’s uncle, an ex-KGB auxiliary operative, who takes the unfortunate step of spitting in the face of a gangster, stating that “we knew how to deal with you back in Russia.” Cronenberg certainly knows how to deal with this complex, but easy-to-follow story situated in the murkiest parts of Britain’s capital.

Rated R.    100 minutes   © 2007 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online

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Harvey Karten's Reviews

Review: Eastern Promises

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