Eastern Promises

Genre: Drama, Thriller, Crime
By Focus Features
Directed by David Cronenberg
Runtime: 100 minutes
Starring Viggo Mortensen (Nikolai), Armin Mueller-Stahl (Semyon), Vincent Cassel (Kirill), Naomi Watts (Anna), Sinead Cusack (Helen), Jerzy Skolimowski (Stepan)

Another great collaboration by David Cronenberg and Viggo Morteinsen and it just gets better. Alike Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather, the mafia clan’s power tussles, strong emphasis on familial ties and all the bad things that mafia do are matched in Eastern Promises. Just that this time round, it’s the Russian mafia, the Vory family.

A midwife, Naomi Watts, got hold of a diary of a foreign woman who died after giving birth to a baby girl. And trouble brew when her curiosity got the better of her. She tried to get it translated, and sought the help of someone she should have steered far away --- The mafia king himself!

Thus begins her relationship with the very watchable Viggo, the driver of the Vory family, who is no mere driver, as we all know from his sleek clothes and leadership air about him. The story deftly brings to life the mafia clan and the downfall of the mafia kingpin that is tightly intertwined with the midwife.

I went to watch Eastern Promises with promises of how brilliant the film was and how David Cronenberg just gets better. However, not wanting to spoil the show and therefore not knowing much about the film before watching it was a good decision. I found, to my pleasant surprise, Viggo was attacked by two assailants in the spa and had to fight them tooth and nail, in the buff.

The fight scene was well enacted with Viggo’s parts visible in many of the shots. Not that I enjoy nude scenes but it was more a matter of the depiction of the fight scenes. No such thing as trying to cover up his manhood awkwardly or unnaturally like Beowulf did. Remembering Beowulf’s fight scene with the monster only brings on the laughs. Good thing there was none of that in Eastern Promises. In fact, the scene had me sitting on the edge of my seat sweating it out for the character. Expect no less than bloody scenes where throats are slit and knives are pushed into the human body. People are actually shown how they are murdered, with the blood oozing out from the slits.

Although Viggo appeared as a follower to the only son of the kingpin where he had to act according to his boss’s whims, even the performance of sex with a prostitute, there was just an air about him that made him so enigmatic and I found myself quietly rooting for him. And rightly so, when I discovered that he’s actually an undercover cop. However, what I could not reconcile is the fact that towards the end, he became the kingpin’s mastermind, instead of going back to his cop days and getting together with Naomi Watts.

Perhaps the director was setting up for a part 2? Or maybe in order for him to bring law and order to that part of London, he had to sacrifice his own freedom to bring about greater control of the Russian mafia under his own charge? Too mind-boggling I say. Perhaps we shall know in a couple of years time if Cronenberg does a sequel.

Less in your face violence than A History of Violence, Eastern Promises is part the decline of a previously glorious mafia clan, the struggle of one insignificant man to rise above his fate, the fall of the mafia king and also the brotherhood between the kingpin’s son and the driver.

A wonderful, gripping movie.