Mysteriousely Mesmerizing
Director : David CronenbergWriter : Steven KnightGenre : Crime, drama, mystery, thriller Cast : Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts, Armin Mueller Stahl, Vincent CasselRelease : September 27th, 2007It's not often that audiences today are amused by a film that has as many things as Eastern Promises does. It's a smart entertainment when a film fan can leave the theater and feel affected by the artistic feature that he/she has just experienced. Eastern Promises has more than a little bit of everything.
Anna Kithrova (Naomi Watts), a half Russian midwife at a London hospital is deeply affected by the desperate situation of a Russian teenager called Tatiana (Sarah Jean Balrosse) who dies while giving birth to a beautiful baby girl. Anna decides to trace the baby's family through Tatiana's diary which is written in Russian. There she finds a card of a restaurant owned by Semyon (Armin Mueller Stahl) who happens to be the notorious leader of Russian crime organization, "Vory v Zakone". Semyon immediately offers to translate the diary once he knows its existence. However, Anna's Russian uncle, Stepan (Jerzy Skolimowski) translates part of the diary and finds out that Tatiana was raped by Semyon when she was fourteen years old and forced to work as a
prostitute. Meanwhile, the mysteriously mesmerizing Russian born, Nikolai Luzhin (Viggo Mortensen) is a loyal driver and a close companion of Semyon's volatile deranged son, Kirill (Vincent Cassel). Nikolai unexpectedly finds his loyalties divided when several lives including his own and Anna's family are jeopardized as they are all drawn to a chain of murder caused by one of most dangerous organized crime families of Eastern European origin in London.The plot is not really that complicated. But somehow the combination of the extraordinary characters, the settings, the mood and the narration create a chemistry that elevates this film from something common into something quite unique and memorable. Set in dark wet and gloomy pre Christmas London, the depressing climate is beautifully presented from the beginning to the end to reflect the low morality and the culture of the violent Russian gangster as well as to explore each character on the film. The cast is fantastic and the script is brilliant. The dialogues are both spoken in English and Russian. The script written by Steven Knight leaves so much unspoken feelings about the two main characters played by Viggo Mortensen and Naomi Watts remaining a haunting mystery.
Eastern Promises will blow your mind away with the memories of unforgettable characters. You won't be able to take your eyes of Viggo Mortensen for his undoubtedly incredibly acting talent in playing Nikolai as both mysterious and mesmerizing. Nikolai, a man who came out of nowhere, playing with the prince and doing business with the king is portrayed to be a menacing looking guy with a hidden goodness in his heart. The character of Nikolai shows a contradiction between good and evil in human's soul. In every gesture he makes, his look, his smirk, his convincing accent, Viggo Mortensen has successfully brought the character to life. To prepare for his role, Viggo traveled alone to Moscow for five days without a translator and learned Siberian accent and some lines in Russian. One of the most memorable scenes is the bath club fight sequence portrayed as bloody and brutal but not that it makes you get sick and the fact that Viggo did the whole thing completely nude is what makes it hard to ignore. On the other hand, a Russian sennior actor, Armin Mueller Stahl plays the character of Semyon, a ruthless godfather figure. Semyon is a devil dressed up as a nice uncle for Christmas. It's frightening how a gangster boss can be both savage and caring about his family. Semyon's son, Kirill is portrayed as a mad man that somehow has a fragile side in his unstable mood, played wonderfully by Vincent Cassel. The innocently beautiful Naomi Watts appears to be a breathtaking oasis in the dessert of bad guys as Anna Kithrova, a brave persistent English midwife with the maternal instinct that leads her to unfold the mystery of a bloody tragedy. Surely, it is the outstanding performance of the characters that makes Eastern Promises worth to watch. No wonder if Viggo Mortensen was nominated for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role on Academy Awards and Golden Globe in 2008.
Credit must be given also to the director David Cronenberg for bringing the script to life and showing a bit of how a real Sin City looks like. This is actually the second time he works with Viggo Mortensen after the remarkably well plotted History of Violence in 2005. Together they will make great partners in film as Tim Burton and Johnny Depp always do. During the premier, Cronenberg said that he wished to present provocative, juicy stories with complexity, showing that all monsters are sentimental and have some kind of relationship to a moral compass. The tittle itself refers to promises made to Russian girls who wish to have a better life in London but unfortunately they end up as broken dreams. Another fantastic element of this film is the score by Howard Shore. It's wonderfully played throughout the scenes to build the creepy and melancholic atmosphere with its slow and sudden up beat in a classy way.
Despite the strong, brutal and bloody violence (which surprisingly involves no gunshot), some graphic sexuality, harsh language and blurred nudity, Eastern Promises is a kind of a morality tale that matters. It's a story of a crime with a hidden tenderness not presented as too sentimental that goes along with the tagline, " Every sin leaves a mark ". This is the kind of film that demands your attention and makes you want to re-watch it without having to be bothered of knowing the ending which provides you with a surprising twist! Eastern Promises is not a film to like but to love,and I LOVE IT! ^_^
