eastern promises (widescreen edition)

Rating:
Date: 2008-07-02
dark movie, darker viggo
You've seen the description of this movie, so I'll skip that. It's dark, violent, slow-moving at times, and very predictable until the end of the movie where you're rewarding with a slight twist in the story. Gritty, gruesome, and ALOT of Russian language lessons. If you like mobster movies, this one might be for you. If not, pass...

Rating:
Date: 2008-07-02
vig
I just like Vig Mortensen. Especially in Hidalgo. This movie was a little different but he was good.

Rating:
Date: 2008-06-23
Buried under the soil of Russia
Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen) is a driver for Russian mobster Kirill (Vincent Cassell) in David Cronenberg's darkly excellent thriller. Kirill's father is Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl), the seemingly avuncular but cold-hearted and ruthless mob boss who runs a drugs, contraband and prostitution racket from his London restaurant. Nikolai is initially little more than a babysitter to the wayward, drunken Kirill, but proves his usefulness to Semyon and seems destined to rise up through the ranks of the organisation.

The film's opening scene sees a young, heavily pregnant girl collapse in a chemist's shop. She is rushed to hospital where she dies in childbirth. The midwife, Anna (Naomi Watts), who has recently lost a child herself, decides to try and trace the girl's family. The only clue the dead girl leaves behind is her diary, which is in Russian. Anna, unable to read the girl's words and finding a card in the diary, pays a fateful visit to the Trans-Siberian restaurant. Semyon seems initially charming and helpful, but after she tells him about the child and the diary, arouses Anna's suspicions when he firstly tries to find out where she lives and then visits her at the hospital. Meanwhile Anna's Russian uncle, Stepa (Jerzy Skolimowsky), has translated enough of the diary to discover that the girl was a 14-year-old prostitute, and that she was being kept as a slave by the mob.

Anna's attempts to save the child, whom she has christened Christine, from a bleak future draw her inextricably into conflict with Semyon, and events seem to be heading to a fatal conclusion. Nikolai, sent to retrieve the diary, initially seems as sinister and cold-blooded as his boss, but reveals occasional glimpses of compassion which intrigue Anna.

Viggo Mortensen is outstanding as the enigmatic Nikolai, whose real identity remains tantalisingly out of reach. Watts' performance as a woman trying to heal her own past by giving Christine a future, is subtle and understated, but as compelling as always. Writer Stephen Knight (Dirty Pretty Things) shows us a London that is cold, bleak and dangerous. The film gives us a fascinating insight into the Russian mafia or "vory v zakone" (thieves in law), who record their histories by tattooing their bodies. The violence is, as ever with Cronenberg, extreme but sparse - and all the more shocking for it. One memorable scene sees a nude Mortensen fighting two Chechen hitmen in a public bathhouse, which leads to a gruesome denouement.

Eastern Promises is a provocative and intelligent thriller - it's not for the squeamish, but among the best films of recent years, and one of David Cronenberg's finest films to date.

Rating:
Date: 2008-06-23
Viggo Mortensen disappears into y et another fantastic role as a Russian gangster
London over the recent years has become sort of a Casablanca of the world of high finance, home to anyone and everyone with a billion or two. Once you're dealing with that kind of wealth, very few people ask serious questions about where the money comes from. To say that there are some seriously wealthy Russians with murky pasts currently residing along the Thames is like saying there are a few computer geeks in Silicon Valley.

And so it is that David Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen reunite after 2005's "A History of Violence" for another sterling film focusing on the darker side of human nature. The movie opens with an assassination (throat slit in a barber's chair) and a death of an innocent girl (giving birth to a her daughter). The girl is a Russian, Tatiana, and the London midwife, Anna (Naomi Watts), who helped deliver her daughter takes it upon herself to find the orphan's family.

Her only clue is Tatiana's diary, and it leads her to a Russian restaurant, owned by the suave, unsettling Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stall). Semyon shows a disturbing interest in the diary and offers to help Anna translate it. And so Anna finds herself slowly brought into Semyon's criminal world, for the restaurant is a mere front for Semyon's other, more lucrative businesses.

Semyon has his own issues. His son, Kirill (Vincent Cassell) is a drunken wastrel, and does not compare favorably to the hired help, Nikolai (Mortensen). Nikolai is allegedly the chauffeur for Kirill, but he's clearly the guy who gets things done and cleans up after Kirill's mistakes, as Nikolai proves when he calmly disposes of the evidence of a murder.

This is a movie of atmosphere and tension, where tattoos can say more than the longest speeches. Mortensen practically disappears into Nikolai, but that shouldn't be a surprise for anyone who has watched him act before. Nikolai has some charm and some compassion, but it is wrapped up in so many layers of ruthlessness and fatalism that it only occasionally gets a chance to rear its ugly head. Mortensen is so perfect for this part that it's hard to appreciate how perfectly he was cast in "The Lord of the Rings" and "Hidalgo."

Cronenberg deftly weaves a complex web of deceit, betrayal, and devotion - this is not a movie you should watch with one of those friends who prefers to yak yak yak and expect you to "tell me what's happening." The entire plot can turn on a quick aside or terse conversation, but the movie rewards the diligent viewer.

This is also an extremely violent movie, culminating in one of the best fight scenes in any movie when Nikolai fights off two Chechen mobsters out for revenge, armed and clad with nothing other than his tattoos.

Mortensen deserves an Academy Award, and it's possible that if he wins one in the next couple of years, the award will be payback for passing him over for this performance. Wow.

Rating:
Date: 2008-06-12
Great movie, but someone forgot to write an ending.
This is a terrific movie. Viggo Mortensen gives a fantastic performance as a Russian gangster. The plot is inventive and the look inside the world's most brutal organized crime group is fascinating. However, this movie literally doesn't have an ending. A minor plot point is tied up towards the end of the movie, but the main conflict of the story is left unresolved. Cronenberg doesn't seem like the kind of director who makes sequels and I've heard nothing about a sequel, so I guess we just have to draw the conclusion that he's just a bad storyteller. Either that or the studio ran out of money or someone misplaced the last portion of the script. Either way, it's a real let down.

As a digression, it should be noted that this movie deceptively misinforms us as to the ethnic/religious makeup of the "Russian" Mafia. Of course these criminals can in no way be regarded as true Christians, but by the huge crucifix tattooed on Viggo Mortensen's chest and the fact that the Russian mobsters celebrate Christmas, Cronenberg not surprisingly is trying to make us think that the "Russian" mafia is made up of native Russian Orthodox people when in fact the Russian Mafia is almost entirely Jewish. An enlightening expose of the Russian mafia is Robert Friedman's Red Mafiya: How the Russian Mob Has Invaded America. It would have been interesting for this movie to have shown how law enforcement's war against the Russian Mafia is being hampered by Jewish organizations who fear the anti-semitism that would result from the prosecution of a predominantly Jewish crime group. Friendman reveals:

"...law enforcement did little to stem the rising tide of the Russian mob....A large part of the problem was political: the Russian mob was predominantly Jewish. It was for that reason, asserted Campanella and other New York State and federal law enforcement officials, that seven years after Campanella's two-man Russian mob unit in the NYPD was inaugurated, it was shut down in a highly politicized, characteristically New York City type of reaction. The effort had come under considerable criticism from the Jewish establishment, which complained that the adverse publicity generated in the hunt for Russian Jewish criminals would foster anti-Semitism and jeopardize the continued emigration of Russian Jews to Israel and the West." (Red Mafiya, pg 83)

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