Can people be good to each other? This question has tickled the brain cells of many an intellectual and artist over the last few centuries. Perhaps the question is more applicable than ever in these days of senseless warfare, racial hatred, political turmoil, and all the other usual things liberal arts students are supposed to be livid about. Director David Cronenberg, director of recent Cannes love-child “A History of Violence,” and of the seriously brilliant, “VideoDrome,” sets the bar high once again in this moody film dealing with a spectrum of human interaction set against the grim, vodka-stained underworld of the Russian Mafia. While “Eastern Promises” may never answer my question, it was a killer riff on the human condition.
The film revolves around two opposing camps coming to terms with the death of young pregnant woman. In one corner sits Anna, a midwife delicately portrayed by Naomi Watts, and her suburban Russian-Anglo family. Across from Watts in the much, much darker corner of the ring broods Nikolai, played by contemplative and very badass-looking Viggo Mortenson. The driver for the son of the head of London’s “Vory v Zokone,” a family of Russian criminals, Nikolai is a quiet, dangerous outsider working his way up the Russian gang’s staircase of leadership.
The death of the pregnant woman leaves only a baby and diary, both of which could incriminate the Russians by illuminating certain, more sordid aspects of their criminal behavior. The film then builds its incredibly dark tension by placing Anna’s family, and the innocent child, in increasing danger from a gang of killers intent on continuing a certain style of life very much outside the law. All the while we are drawn to by Nikolai, a respectable killer much in the style of Jef Costillo, the cooler-than-a-melting-glacier hitman protagonist of the Jean-Pierre Melville staple “Le Samourai.”
In classic Cronenberg style, the film’s narrative is full of dark turns, while the symbolic subtext behind characters’ Russian prison tattoos creates a commentary on a compelling, sad, and beautiful aspects of international crime. In the Russian Mafia, each member’s past actions and crimes are embellished upon them in tattoos—a cross indicates high rank, a shovel for your years in a prison camp, etc. Cronenberg uses this aspect of true Russian crime to startling visual effect, offering an almost Shakespearian version of familial obligation in which marks of ink denote ultimate loyalty. Throughout the film, the tattoos of Mortenson and his cronies offer some of the film’s most stunning photography, while adding danger and mystique to the characters who sport them with ghastly pride.
Among a rut of mediocre Hollywood fare, “Eastern Promises” stands out as an intense character-driven personal piece, a look at a sordid world of throat cutting, statutory rape, and drunk Russian murderers. I can’t really praise this movie enough in 500 words, but I shouldn’t have to since any self-respecting fan of sincere and worthy cinema should see whatever Cronenberg releases as a matter of principle. If you want to see badass tattoos, a baby in danger, Viggo Mortenson naked, and/or a man get stabbed in the eye you should take your six and half dollars down to Destinta and see “Eastern Promises.” And if this review still leaves you with doubts about seeing it, stay home—it’s probably too cool for you anyways.
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