In Britain, perhaps nobody else garner viler whispers than Eastern European gangsters, especially with their reputation as human traffickers. Eastern Promises depicts this seedy underground of immigrants as scripted by Steve Knight, writer of another seedy crime story involving illegal immigrants, Dirty Pretty Things. This time, Knight delves even deeper and darker into the underbelly of London, enhanced by the grim and almost fetish-like direction of David Cronenberg.
Eastern Promises is a film rich with themes and morality questions aside from just a portrayal of the Eastern European mob. The ultimate moral test begins when Anna (Naomi Watts), a midwife at a London hospital, helps a teenage prostitute who dies while giving birth to a baby. The girl leaves only a diary, written in Russian, which contains the secrets of members of the Vory v Zakone—a real life criminal organization—known to be extremely dangerous and callously brutal. Choosing to do the right thing means that she will put her and her family in danger, but ignoring it would gnaw at her conscience. Most people live their lives knowing that dark corners exist in society, but count their blessings that they never have to cross paths. Anna is given the choice to either confront those dark corners head-on or keep on living in bliss. That very question is the moral basis of the movie, and it’s the window for the audience to climb in through.
Anna’s decision to be involved puts her in the sights of a mysterious “driver” for the Vory, a ruthless tattooed man named Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen). Nikolai has his own choices to make. He is carefully moving up the Vory v Zakone ladder, but the little sympathy he has for Anna might jeopardize his agenda. In comes another test. A twist on his character is disclosed later in the movie, and while clichéd and completely throwaway, it adds another layer to Nikolai’s ambiguous actions, questioning the limits of his morality even more.
The name of the game is selling people, and the cruelty of this game bleeds over to the life of its players. There’s talk of family, pride and respect within them—none of which are followed by any. These mobsters are two-faced and weak. The head of the operation, Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl), pretends to be a friendly restaurant owner by day and mob father figure by night, but he’s still just a man satisfying his own lust. His son Kirill (Vincent Cassell) abhors homosexuality and would kill a man for merely suggesting it, yet he often stares longingly at Nikolai, perfectly capsulated by Cronenberg in a scene where Kirill forces Nikolai to debauch a young slave while he leers on. When we learn of Nikolai’s secret later, this scene becomes even more disturbing.
The film is violent, but different from the usual depiction of mob films. The presence of guns is missing, unlike the typical gangster film that glorifies the use of firearms. Cronenberg equates violence with pain, and so aligns the death scenes in the film with body mutilations, going so far as to referencing our existence. In one scene, a gangster wearing a scarf is killed by a silent slash to the throat. As he dies, the gangster faces the camera and pulls down his scarf to reveal the large gash on his neck, overflowing with blood, as if he’s presenting us with the money shot. Yet far from being a preaching about screen violence, it’s merely Cronenberg’s way of telling us that movie violence should look painful and obscene.
Similarly, much has been talked about Viggo’s full-frontal nude scene. Yes, it’s there, and yes, you can see everything, but the scene in which it happens is so unflinchingly brutal and painful that you have no time to distract yourself with such meaningless detail. Far from being flattering, the scene shows Nikolai at his most vulnerable, his entire body exposed while his skin is being cut up. It’s one of those scenes that has potential to last in movie history. His willingness to act in a vicious fight scene in the buff aside, Viggo has delivered an amazing performance here. He doesn’t just act tough for a tough role. He completely transforms himself into a Russian killer so meticulously that at certain points you simply forget that he’s Viggo.
Eastern Promises doesn’t feature the radical ideas and mind-boggling visuals Cronenberg is known for, and the dramatic heft hits too little too late, but it’s still a solid crime film no matter how you look at it.
"Eastern Promises" opens September 14, 2007 and is rated R. Drama. Directed by David Cronenberg. Written by Steven Knight. Starring Armin Mueller Stahl, Naomi Watts, Viggo Mortensen, Vincent Cassel.
