ScreenWize

David Cronenberg is obsessed with the body and the idea of infection. He’s made unconventional horror and science-fiction films like Scanners, The Fly, and Dead Ringers, all edgy and intelligent, but frequently grisly and shocking, and for many years he was known as the bad boy of Canadian cinema. His latest film, Eastern Promises is more like his recent work Spider and A History of Violence – it’s a psychological thriller but retains ample traces of his obsessions: there are grisly (but utterly compelling) scenes with blood and there are extravagantly tattooed gangsters, carrying their personal history as images burnt onto their skin. The idea of infection is there too, but now as social disease: the Russian mafia have come to London, bringing with them their intense feuds, their transported violence and their corruption.

It is this sub-culture where Cronenberg’s story takes place. Anna Khitrova (Naomi Watts) is a nurse who delivers a baby to dying girl. Anna is left with the dead girl’s diary and a business card for the Trans-Siberian Restaurant, owned by Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl). Anna visits him, trying to trace the mother’s identity to prevent the baby being adopted out, and Semyon offers to help her. But when Anna reads the dead girl’s diary, she realises the innocent eyed Semyon has other motives. He’s actually a Russian crime boss with a psychotic son Kirill (Vincent Cassel) and a carefully polite driver Nikolai (Viggo Mortenson). It’s Nikolai who commands attention at every twist of the story: he is cool and thoughtful but seemingly capable of immense brutality. He rides the fine line between seduction and subversion with poise and calm. Anna is repelled and interested, but always out of her depth in this brutal contaminated world.

Cronenberg controls the pace with the precision of a surgeon, slowly building up the tension and widening the narrative before releasing the critical information we need to make sense of the story’s core, Like any good psychological thriller it is motive we are looking for, but once revealed Cronenberg isn’t sure what to do and the power ebbs from the film rapidly at the end. Mortenson is superb and surely an Oscar candidate with his performance. His composure is contrasted with Cassel’s wild and emotional Kirill and the scenes between them are the best in the film – loaded with the politics of dependency and mistrust. It’s a powerful story but some may be turned off by the graphic nature of the violence.

Rating:

Filed Under: Reviews by Simon