Eastern Promises
dir. David Cronenberg
Focus Features
Note: This review contains a major spoiler two-thirds of the way
through. If you don't want a spoiler, stop reading when you see Kevin
Spacey!
For millions of Americans, Eastern Promises is more than just a movie; it's a unique opportunity to gaze upon Viggo Mortenson's junk flying around a London bathhouse. But to concentrate upon the film's signature naked fight scene — a taut triumph of elegant choreography, novel conception and more than a little blood — misses the real power of the movie.
Eastern Promises is set in London's world of Russian organized crime, a place where sudden riptides threaten to drag down even the most seasoned and dangerous of thugs, to say nothing of the innocents caught up in the meat grinder. Propelled into the underworld by way of a dead prostitute, orphaned baby, and incriminating diary is the headstrong and decent British nurse Anna Khitrova, played ably by Naomi Watts.
Facing off against Anna and her family is Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl), head of one of the most dangerous gangs in London. He is both courtly and cold as ice. Kirill (Vincent Cassel) is the son, and is next in line for the throne. He's patently unfit for the job. Nikolai Luzhin (Viggo Mortensen) is the film's pivotal character; officially Kirill's "driver," he has the deadly self-restraint and focus that the heir apparent lacks. Anna works earnestly to use the diary to help reunite the orphaned baby with her extended family; in the process, she digs up unpleasant secrets and puts herself in direct conflict with the resourceful and fearless Nikolai.
The pulsing visual heart of Eastern Promises is the Trans—Siberian Restaurant, not only the seat of Semyon's malign power, but also the convivial scene of celebrations, including the moving and lushly depicted 100th birthday of a Russian woman. The brilliance of director David Cronenberg is that he uses light to illuminate darkness; the food at the restaurant is shot sparingly and in passing, but it looks ravishingly delicious, a many-hued and multifaceted feast of life. The celebrations at the restaurant are warm, genuine, emotional, authentic — the light they shed both deepens the shadows and illuminates the demons that hide within them.
Mueller-Stahl's portrayal of Semyon is a revelation in how to grippingly portray malignant power, ranking right up there with Forest Whitaker's dazzling turn as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland. The acting and part both recall Marlon Brando as Don Corleone and more directly Bill Raymond's portrayal of "The Greek," in the second season of The Wire. All are older men who are fit, charming, cautious, engaged in their community and the heads of criminal enterprises that kill to protect their operations.
As such, all three kingpins are credible and therefore terrifying. It's to the credit of Eastern Promises that its mobsters don't feel like cartoons. What they do is brutal and dehumanizing, not funny and viscerally thrilling. The film isn't merely filled with crime; it's filled with victims.
The film's other mobsters are no less engaging than the boss. While Mortensen is icily beguiling as Nikolai, Cassel's Kirill is all heat and animal rage. His portrait of a conflicted, damaged man killing himself with booze and recklessness flirts with melodrama, but he expertly reins it, and the performance is electric. The two play off of one another throughout the movie: wisdom versus foolish courage, control versus incontinence, nerve versus cowardice, calm nerves versus the shattered wreck of a man living in the shadow of a terrifying father.
It is the mafia initiation scene for Nikolai — without question the most entrancing of the film — that hints at what Eastern Promises could have been: a penetrating look inside the twisted, transnational nightmare that is Vory V Zakone, the brotherhood of thieves.
 |
|
|
The questioning of Nikolai by a murderer's row of Russian Mafia bigshots is a beautiful, finely honed, penetrating scene, revealing the very essence of the thieves' code — to forsake one's family, to live as one already dead, to exist only in the "zone" of thieves. The scene ebbs and flows through the words of the bosses, and it's every bit as elegant and menacing as the darkest moments in The Godfather, Part II.
Moreover, the film's use of Russian prison tattoos is a visual stroke of genius: These elegant dark blots tell the story of their characters, stick to them like marks of judgment and demonstrate the power of organized crime. It literally gets under their skin.
But the film is more about the individuals who are its characters than the systems of ethnicity, hierarchy and naked capitalism that power the criminal enterprise at its heart. And in its last reel, the film's integrity suffers a hard knock; the script takes a turn that could uncharitably be described as "Hollywood," and is implausible at best.
Nikolai Luzhin, a pillar of masculinity and a thorough-bred thief and Siberian prison veteran, is actually an undercover agent for Scotland Yard's Russian section. How was he recruited? Why is someone living a criminal life, dedicated to thwarting the authorities, while actually working for them? If his bosses are obsessively secretive and paranoid, how does he avoid discovery? How has he sustained the masquerade for so long, all the way up to and including an induction as a full member of the mob? Don't they run background checks? What the hell is his motivation, anyway?
Entire excellent films such Donnie Brasco and The Departed turned upon — in fact, wrested much of their narrative flow and emotional heft from — a twist that is sprung almost casually in the fourth quarter of Eastern Promises. Lacking context, backstory or emotional justification, the last-minute transformation of Nikolai rocks the logic of the film, and inserts an artificially sweet note into what had been heretofore a sophisticated, balanced and spicy dish.
But that qualification aside, that Eastern Promises is an imperfect masterpiece doesn't degrade its superb cast or masterful director; even a flawed jewel can catch and hold the eye.
— James Norton (jrnorton@flakmag.com)
