KEY POINTS:
Herald Rating: * * * *
Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts, Vincent Cassel, Armin Mueller-Stahl
Director: David Cronenberg
Running time: 101 mins
Rating: R18, contains graphic violence & sex scenes
Screening: SkyCity
Verdict: A moody, brutal and sophisticated mobster flick
If Viggo Mortensen wants to be remembered for more than just helping a group of friendly hobbits save Middle Earth, then his naked unarmed combat scene with a couple of Chechen thugs in a London bathhouse goes a good way towards achieving this.
Eastern Promises is Mortensen's second collaboration with David Cronenberg (the first was the acclaimed A History of Violence) and obviously they have developed a trusting creative relationship. The character of Nikolai Luzhin would be a risky proposition for any actor who hadn't been a Russian mobster in a previous life, but Mortensen fully immerses himself in the role, speaking convincing Russian, and emerges with a complex character that in less capable hands would likely have fallen victim to being just a slicked-back hair caricature.
Eastern Promises, like A History of Violence, is filled with mobsters, but this time Cronenberg tackles Russian mobsters in London, and Mortensen is right in the thick of it as mob driver Nikolai. Keen to work his way into the Vory V Zakone criminal family organisation, and receive his stars (tattoos which represent his allegiance to the organisation) Nikolai does the dirty work for Kirill (Cassel) the drunk and volatile son of Semyon (Mueller-Stahl), the head of the family.
The family's prostitution ring is jeopardised when an inquisitive midwife, played by Naomi Watts, visits Semyon enquiring into the background of a Russian prostitute who died giving birth to a baby girl. Armed with the prostitute's diary, Anna is fast in over her head with her new Russian friends, endangering both her family and the baby she is trying to protect,
Eastern Promises is one of Cronenberg's more commercial works, exploring the idea of a sinister and exotic Eastern world hidden away behind closed doors in a Western city. There is nothing picturesque about his dark and gritty representation of London, which contrasts nicely with the lush, textural interiors of Semyon's family restaurant, and Anna's mother's very simple home, but the one thing all of Cronenberg's sets have in common, is a sense of lurking danger.
And wary you should be, because with this medium-paced film Cronenberg lives up to his controversial reputation by throwing shockingly short, sharp moments of gruesome violence at us. While you can't help but feel he's having fun at the viewer's expense, it's easy to forgive him, thanks to the to the intriguing storylines and wonderfully tense and restrained performances his cast deliver, making this an engrossing, if at times, outrageous visual experience.
