Eastern Promises

A crime thriller by nature but an enigma in execution, Eastern Promises picks up the pieces of David Cronenberg’s scattershot A History of Violence and solidifies the auteur’s transition into the hard-boiled crime genre with vision and panache. It’s a more consistent, universally powerful feature than Violence and while Cronenberg never seems to narrow down the field of thematic strands into one singular message, it cannot be denied that Promises is a real thrill, unlike the more tepid contemporary thrillers that we’ve seen in the past year.

You can kind of deduce where Eastern Promises is going just by looking at it. The major “revelations” feel more like moments in which the film confirms certain inevitable truths. It’s trying to be a shocking, shape-shifting mystery of sorts and, I’m sad to say, in that respect it fails. But I’d also never say I was let down by a single development. They may be guessable but there are all splendidly done. There’s perhaps not as many real twists here as there are thrusts of harrowing excitement. It’s a jolt of a film that in spite of some foreseeable reversals of fortune, delivers chills and excitement with some truly original cinematic moments of ruthless, maddeningly intense violence.

Viggo Mortensen is a stoic revelation as Nokalai, a driver and entry level member of the vory v zakone, a Russian gang whose London division is headed by Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl) and his delinquent alcoholic son, Kirill (Vincent Cassel). When a young doctor named Anna (Naomi Watts) discovers that a 14 year-old girl who died during childbirth had ties to the gang, she begins her own amateurish investigation, at first innocently and unknowingly approaching the vory v zakone’s restaurant hangout simply because its name appeared on a business card found in the girl’s diary. Following this uncomfortable initial encounter, her suspicions become raised and she makes it her personal business to translate the young girl’s diary and get to the bottom of this twisted story.

Eastern Promises is a real pleasure to watch. It unfolds with a flawless ease, excellently written, directed, and performed all around. Save for a few moments of over-explanatory closure near the film’s end that feel awfully sentimental and contrived for someone as bold as Cronenberg, this is a standout feature that should set trends for more complacent gangster garbage.

Grade: A-