CINEMA: Eastern Promises

Although not all of David Cronenberg’s films are entirely successful, he does choose subjects that really make you think. In his last film, A History Of Violence, he explored the relationship between masculinity and exactly that – violence. Eastern Promises acts as a companion piece to that movie, not only because they both star Viggo Mortensen, but also because violence, and more importantly men and violence, are put under the microscope once more.

In a cold, grey London Anna (Naomi Watts) acts a midwife at a large NHS hospital. When a young, heavily pregnant Russian teenager is admitted and subsequently dies, Anna feels a wave of pity for the baby she leaves orphaned. Using the girl’s diary Anna traces her back to the restaurant where she used to work for Russian émigré Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl) and his son Kirill (Vincent Cassel). Here she meets their chauffeur Nikolai (Mortensen) who warns her to leave well alone. But Anna feels obliged to keep searching for someone who will claim the baby as family, but the more she digs the more she unearths about the Russian Mafia, dubious business deals and people trafficking. Although attracted to Nikolai she knows getting any closer could put her life, and the lives of her family, into terrible jeopardy.

With London now home to more of Russia’s oligarchs than Moscow this is a timely, utterly chilling and thrilling film, unwrapping and revealing to the audience a shadowy world most of us never knew existed. This glimpse into the closed Russian community is absolutely intriguing, made even more so here with the spicy whiff of added danger and violence (there’s no getting away from that word in this film). In fact, the whole film is imbued with a sense of threat, both implied and real, and the pivotal scene in the film is a brutal, bare-knuckle (and bare everything else) fight in a Turkish bath.

Here, Viggo Mortensen shows there’s so much more to him than Lord Of The Rings as he gives a performance of sinewy strength and real courage. Although Naomi Watts is also strong, her role is slightly more passive and it is Mortensen who exudes danger from every pore. This is gripping, if viscerally violent stuff, but Cronenberg injects just enough dark, morbid humour into proceedings to keep viewers on his side.     Dee Pilgrim