October 22, 2007 -- “Eastern Promises” is a bloody violent film about a woman who crosses paths with the Russian Mafia in London and gets herself and her family into a lot of trouble. The story is familiar, a lot like those tales of the Italian Mafia, the Irish Mafia, the Chinese Tongs and the Japanese Yakusa. It makes one wonder. Is organized crime funding these movies as a recruiting tool? The movie industry has a continuing love affair with organized crime, it seems.

This particular Mafia movie is bloodier than most, but it is also more clever than most films of its ilk. The ending has a twist to it that is about as slick as anything I've seen in recent years. In addition to a very strong script, the acting is quite good as well. Viggo Mortensen, who starred in all those “Lord of the Rings” movies, stars as the mysterious Nikolai. He keeps telling everyone that he is “just a chauffeur,” but no one believes him, and for good reason. He is very ambitious and wants to use his boss to get ahead. His boss, Kirill (played by Vincent Cassel of “Ocean's 13”), is high up in the London Vory V Zakone organization (a Russian criminal brotherhood), but only because he inherited the position from his father, Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl of “Jakob the Liar”). Kirill is a fool, and a drunk. Semyon is a shark.

Nikolai uses his friendship with Kirill to move up in the Vory V Zakone. He is ruthless and violent, but there is a streak of humanity in him as well. He helps Kirill stay out of trouble and he looks out for those who cannot protect themselves. One such person is Anna (Naomi Watts of “The Painted Veil”), who comes across a diary full of intimate secrets about Kirill and the Vory V Zakone. The diary belonged to a young girl who was a sex slave for the Vory V Zakone. The girl died after giving birth and Anna wants to find the girl's family. Anna can't read the diary because it is written in Russian. Semyon learns of the diary and offers to translate it for Anna. She has her uncle Stepan (Jerzy Skolimowski) translate the diary. Soon, everyone associated with the diary is in danger.

There is extremely graphic violence in this film, so much so that it seemed excessive, but that is a hallmark of some of director David Cronenberg's films, including “Scanners” and “eXistenZ.” He likes to go overboard with the graphic, nauseating imagery. He just doesn't know when to stop. If you can stomach Cronenberg's bloody style, then you'll probably like this kind of movie a lot more than I do. Even though the violence is excessive, the acting is superb and the story has a nice twist to it. The screenplay by Steven Knight (“Amazing Grace”) is devilishly clever. Like “The Sixth Sense” you need to watch this movie twice to pick up on all of its little tricks. No one is who they seem to be on the surface. Mortensen is superb as the cool, calculating Nikolai, perhaps his best performance ever. This may be Armin Mueller-Stahl's best performance since “Shine.” Naomi Watts makes the most of a difficult role. Vincent Cassel is excellent playing a very weak, flawed character. This film rates a B.

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Copyright © 2007 Robert Roten. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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