Marcus Mattsson

Hi, this review is going to be a bit different than the usual. I’ve decided to spend some more time on the articles I write in the future, and that’ll hopefully show. I hope you’ll enjoy it.

Eastern Promises
Director: David Cronenberg
Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts
Runtime: 100 minutes

With his previous movie, A History of Violence, and Eastern Promises Canadian director David Cronenberg moves closer to the mainstream audience, but that is in no way a bad thing. Mortensen’s lead performance is extraordinary, and authenticity is on the top of the list as we’re introduced to the brutal world of organized crime in London.

We follow the charismatic Nikolai Luzhin, played by Viggo Mortensen, who’s working for the Russian mafia in London. His path is crossed by midwife Anna Khitrova, played by Naomi Watts, who’s desperately trying to get information about an orphan child, whose mother had tie-ins with the Russian family. The movie’s antagonist, the cozy, grandpa-like mafia leader Semyon, is well-played by Armin Mueller-Stahl, a character whose darker sides are almost entirely established by other sources, e.g. a diary telling us that he raped a 14-year old girl, a very interesting way of treating the character. Naomi Watts’ character is, on the other hand, very bland, from the get-go you know what she’ll end up doing, and her behavior seems to vary notably, very out of character and rather tedious, although her personal story wakes some interest. As her contrast we have Viggo Mortensen’s character, which’s without a doubt the most fascinating in the movie. With a slick performance worthy of an Academy Award Mortensen makes the rough world completely believable. As always he really did his homework, studying Russian gangsters and their tattoos, learning some of the language, and getting all his dialogue translated to Russian, it resulted in one of the best Russian accents from a non-Russian actor, I’ve ever heard. In retrospect it’s peculiar to think of Ed Harris’ wonderful performance as a tough guy in A History of Violence, and then see Mortensen completely top it in Eastern Promises. I’ve always liked the half-Dane, especially his real life personality, but this is the first movie that’s really opened my eyes to his extraordinary talent.

Like all Cronenberg movies, there’s violence, brutal violence, but it all seems to have a purpose. In the movie’s opening shot we’re witness to a brutal murder, a boy literally saws the throat of a Russian gangster, and we see everything. But it works, and the brutality fits the brutal world we’re about to enter. As in A History of Violence the movie ends with a big fight scene, here a nude Nikolai is ambushed at a bathhouse, by two fully clothed thugs with knifes. Fighting them completely naked – with nothing censored I should add – makes the character seem unusually defenseless. The fighting is typical Cronenberg – over-the-top with neck stabbings and eye gushing – but it all works, it feels real, and it’s simply an amazing scene. The movie’s tagline “Every sin leaves a mark” comes to life rather literally, since the Russian mafia uses tattoos as individual business cards; they tell the story of your life, crimes you have done, prison sentences you have endured, etc. The authenticity of the movie’s tattoos is very high; most of them look like they do in real life and the crew spend a lot of time researching this. In addition to that, the movie also deals with issues like human trafficking instead of the usual gangster stuff like drug dealing and money laundering, and that also adds another layer of realism. Furthermore you have Mortensen’s incredible performance and the fact that most of the movie is shot on location, in London, making Eastern Promises one of the most authentic gangster movies I have ever seen. It is clearly a must see, although the weakest part of the movie is the ending, with a twist that wasn’t really needed, and it ruins some of the integrity of Mortensen’s character. Nonetheless, a great movie from the Cronenberg/Mortensen duo.

8/10