Film Review: “Eastern Promises”

Directed by David Cronenberg, “Eastern Promises” jumps out of the gate with the most realistic, horrific throat slashing with a dull knife you will ever see. (How do they fake that kind of thing?)

You the audience have been duly warned and every scene after that is charged with pure danger. You don’t know what will happen because a character’s glance might be judged wrong and out will come an ice pick.

Anna Khitrova (Naomi Watts), a part English midwife, who gets her last name from her Russian father, works at a North London hospital. We meet her as she struggles, but fails to save a young pregnant girl, Tatiana (Sarah-Jeanne Labrosse), who is brought to the hospital after hemorrhaging and collapsing at a pharmacy. The baby is saved, though.

Determined to find a relative with whom she can leave the baby, Anna takes the dead girl’s diary, which is written in Russian, to her Uncle Stepan (Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski). When he refuses to translate the diary, Anna takes a photocopy to a Russian restaurant owner, Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl), whose business card was in the diary. Seemingly inseparable from his kitchen, Semyon offers meals of czarist luxury to his customers in his posh Trans-Siberian restaurant.

Anna and the rest of us gradually catch on that Semyon is the patriarch of London’s local Russian mafia family, the Vory-V-Zakone (“Thieves In Law”), who’re involved in everything from selling teenage prostitutes to running weapons to murder. Tatiana, we discover by degrees, was forced into prostitution and drug addiction by Semyon. She was trying to escape when she hemorrhaged and ended up in Anna’s hospital.

Semyon’s heir apparent is his son Kirill (Vincent Cassel) a vicious, out-of-control murderer. Kirill is the heir-apparent to the throne but his father doesn’t seem willing to acknowledge that. Moderating between the two family members is Nikolai Luzhin (Viggo Mortensen), a chilly, impeccably dressed “chauffeur” whose carefully groomed exterior masks a ruthless brutality. Bullied and ordered around by Kirill, Nikolai is being prepped to graduate from driver and enforcer to a mob captain with the tattooed stars to prove it. Semyon barely hides his preference for Nikolai over his own son.

Skillfully written by Steve Knight, we learn that Russian criminals have their careers tattooed on their bodies. Nikolai is covered with tattoos, but he needs two eight-pointed stars on his chest and tattoos on his knees to complete his body book that will show that he belongs to the highest rank of the Russian underworld.

Anna wants to find the baby’s relatives and agrees to exchange the original diary for a family address in Russia. When Anna finds out what is in the diary and who it implicates, instead of minding her own business, she steps deeper into the dangerous world of the Russian mafia and becomes entangled with Nikolai.

Assigned to “dissuade” her, it's impossible to guess whether Nikolai will add Anna to the collection of corpses he has already dropped in the Thames. Not once, but twice he warns Anna to stay away, though. But her need to discover who Tatiana was combined with her growing attraction to Nikolai makes it impossible for Anna to keep to a safe distance. And Anna forms an instant bond with Tatiana’s infant.

This is Mortensen’s second film with David Cronenberg. He was dazzling in Cronenberg’s “A History of Violence” and has found his Martin Scorsese in the director. Mortensen, who can seem a little rigid and withdrawn, uses that stillness to create an unnerving presence. Nikolai says very little and displays an economy of movement. So what little he does say and do has even greater impact. Watts is best in the scenes with the actors playing her family--her mom, Helen (Sinead Cusack) and her disagreeable uncle Stepan. Cassel has the most difficult task as Kirill because he has to navigate the stereotypes of playing a character who is a drunk Russian and a closeted gay. Both groups might be offended with the role but Cassel is a good actor and he makes the character work within the context of this film.

“Eastern Promises” is written by Steve Knight, who also wrote “Dirty Pretty Things.” Knight again contemplates immigrant dreams that turn into nightmares. This time young girls made into sex slaves. Tatiana’s diary provides a view into how twisted those dreams can become. Knight also conveys little details that comment on the assimilation process of other immigrants whether it’s a Russian youth’s desire to go to a Chelsea football (soccer) game or Kirill’s attempt to explain that the slang “the coast is clear” has nothing to do with the beach or the periodic monologues from Tatiana’s diary that vocalize her desire to see the world and find a better life before she was forced into prostitution and drug addiction.

A key to the film’s success is the contribution of cinematographer and longtime Cronenberg collaborator Peter Suschitzky. The careful and precise composition of each shot, combined with the use of sound, insinuate something dark lurking below the often calm and polished surface. Suschitzky’s poised, objective camera records some of the violence with a surprisingly calm eye that makes the violence all the more disturbing. Violence on screen tends to be one of two things: so over the top it severs all ties to reality or so brutal it shocks. Cronenberg’s violence leans toward the latter category. The film’s violence stirs unease at the very least.

The ads for the film state “Every sin leaves a mark.” This draws attention to the way the Russian gangsters use tattoos to tell the story of their lives--each tattoo records something they’ve done. The tattooed hides of these Russian mafiozy is the surface they proudly reveal to others in their secret world and it defines them. Cronenberg also shows the surfaces the characters present to the outside world. Nikolai has two skins--his tattooed body which in turn is covered by slick Armani suits. He uses the outer skin to try and fool the public, while the skin underneath defines his rank within the inner circle of the gangster world. As the film progresses, we find that there is even another layer to his character. It’s appropriate then that in two key scenes Nikolai strips down to expose more than just his flesh. In some ways, Nikolai has much in common with Mortensen’s character in “Violence,” who hides one persona beneath another.

Anna may not have such obvious layers, but she also wears an outer mask--a pretty British midwife--who hides both her Russian heritage and her own baby’s death. Everyone in this film has one surface they want people to see as well as another one underneath. Semyon is the doting grandfather who harbors a much darker soul. And his son Kirill seems forced by the rigid codes of his mob environment to do a lot of macho posturing to hide the fact that he’s gay and a softie for children. Even Stepan, the bigoted old school Russian who disapproved of Anna’s past relationship with a black doctor, turns out to be a decent sort, who once worked back in the day as a KGB auxiliary against the Vory-V-Zakone in the Rodina (Mother Russia).

But then Cronenberg has always been interested in human surfaces whether it’s a body with parasites squirming beneath the skin (“They Came From Within”) or a blood-sucking phallus under Marilyn Chambers’ arm (“Rabid”) or bodies mixed with technology (“eXiztenZ”). These earlier films fall in the horror genre but both “A History of Violence” and “Eastern Promises” are more thrillers or violent dramas. Yet in a sense they too are dealing with horror, the horror of what people are capable of doing to each other. So although Cronenberg is not doing horror in a conventional sense, he’s still showing us horrors. The brilliantly staged fight in a Turkish bath house--where a naked Nikolai is assaulted by two knife wielding thugs--has all the horror and discomfort of Hitchcock’s “Psycho” shower scene. “Eastern Promises” is a horror film hiding beneath the more refined skin of a sleek Hollywood thriller.

Elegant in its ability to disturb, “Eastern Promises” demonstrates that Cronenberg is one of today’s top filmmakers. He serves up a twisted morality tale that flashes a fleeting and unexpected tenderness. His film gets better upon reflection and with repeated viewings. The more you consider the details, the more they add up to something smart and complex.

If there’s one quibble I have, the title brings to mind a mid-range perfume. This film is more a shot of blood with a vodka chaser.