Eastern Promises

I have to confess, I was a little afraid to watch this film. As with every David Cronenberg movie, Eastern Promises had already achieved some degree of infamy by the time I got around to watching it. In this case there was some talk about authenticity, about strong subject matter… and then a whole lot of chatter about a horrifying fight scene in a bath house. As usual no amount of hype prepared me for what I was about to experience first hand, but then again that is why I’ve remained a fan all these years.

Easter Promises opens with a homeless teenaged mother dying anonymously during childbirth. The only clues left behind about her life are arms covered in track marks and a diary written entirely in Russian. Ana (Naomi Watts) is the midwife who bears witness to the birth and she sets out on a quest to find the infants surviving relatives, a task that requires translating the diary. In her search for answers her life intersects with that of Seymon (Armin Mueller-Stahl); a Russian entrepreneur and mobster. Seymon offers to translate the diary, but only to see how incriminating the material really is.

Meanwhile things are business as usual for Seymon’s son Kirill (Vincent Cassel) and his driver Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen). And by business as usual I’m referring to violent murder and detailed scenes of body disposal. While the films bloodier aspects are presented with unflinching detail, they feel more educational than merely shocking. You watch the Russian mobsters in their habitat, you watch them hunt and stalk. And yeah, every so often you watch them slice a throat open with a razor blade. Still beyond the violence and dark ambiance that David Cronenberg brings to the film I feel that its best assets are the actors involved. Naomi Watts is strong and determined, but haunted by a worldly weariness that foreshadows her decisions. Vincent Cassel is a whirlwind of drunken malice standing out as a strong villain in a movie without heroes. Viggo Mortensen outdoes his performance from “a history of violence” as a dutiful and distant mob soldier, somebody willing to do what it takes to get his job done. Still the movies greatest star is Armin Mueller-Stahl. As the mob patriarch he is equal parts friendly grandfather and tyrannosaurus rex.

My only real gripe of course is the ending. It is as though somebody cut out a good 20 minutes and then showed you the epilogue. This is highly unfortunate and also extremely uncharacteristic given how the movie doesn’t shy away from showing anything no matter how terrifying or mundane. Still by then the movie has wrapped its bleak embrace around the viewer’s imagination, so it’s not too difficult to fill in the gaps yourself. It’s just that I would have preferred seeing David Cronenberg do it for me, which is why they pay him the big bucks after all.