A Well-Acted Crime Drama Set in the World of the Russian Mafia
Directed by David Cronenberg, Eastern Promises (2007) is a thriller that stars Viggo Mortensen and Naomi Watts. The story, a yarn about Russian mobsters who make sex slaves out of girls from the former Soviet Union, takes place in London. The film opens with a man getting his throat cut in a barbershop, followed by a profusely bleeding, pregnant teenager passing out in a pharmacy. These events set in motion a plot that, after several twists and turns, arrives at a satisfying ending.
A major strength of Eastern Promises is its excellent cast. Viggo Mortensen is impressive as a low-level criminal who works for a ruthless mob boss (Armin Mueller-Stahl) and his loose-cannon son (Vincent Cassel). Naomi Watts is appealing as a British midwife who unwittingly bumbles into conflict with these mobsters.
Cronenberg's London is a multiethnic, rainy, grim metropolis. The story unfolds at a deliberate pace, occasionally punctuated by visceral violence. The film's most memorable scene involves Mortensen's character, naked in a Turkish bath, in a savage fight for his life against a pair of Chechen assassins.
Banality, Mystery and Brutality
In Eastern Promises, the crime boss Semyon (Mueller-Stahl) owns the Trans-Siberian, an elegant Russian restaurant where old ladies have birthday parties while an accordionist serenades them with "Ochi Chyornye" ("Dark Eyes"). But the restaurant also serves as a headquarters for the Vory v Zakone (Thieves in Law), a brotherhood of professional criminals who engage in various dastardly activities, including human trafficking.
We are introduced to the secretive Vory v Zakone through Anna (Watts), a naïve midwife who meets Semyon in the course of trying to obtain information about one of her patients. He seems avuncular and gives her a taste of his borscht, and she at first fails to realize she has put herself and her family in grave danger. But she gradually develops a strange bond with Semyon's mysterious chauffeur Nikolai (Mortensen).
The wild card in the story is Semyon's son Kirill (Cassel), a weak and reckless drunkard who relies on Nikolai for both companionship and protection. But when Kirill's manliness is questioned, his rash response triggers bloody retaliation by a rival gang.
A Pair of Featurettes
The only extras on the Eastern Promises DVD are two featurettes. One of these is the 10-minute "Secrets and Stories," which has director David Cronenberg, screenwriter Steve Knight and several members of the cast talking about the movie. Not one of the film's major roles is played by a Russian, but the cast is multinational: Mortensen is American, Mueller-Stahl is German, Cassel is French, Watts is Australian and the actor who plays Anna's uncle is Polish. Another bit of trivia is that in preparing to portray Nikolai, Mortensen visited the central Russian city of Yekaterinburg, which is where Bolsheviks executed the last of the tsars and his family.
The more interesting of the two featurettes is the seven-minute "Marked for Life," which is about the many tattoos on Nikolai's body. Some of the ideas here were drawn from the documentary The Mark of Cain (2000), which is about how some Russian prisoners have tattoos indicating crimes they've committed, sentences served, rank in the Vory v Zakone, etc. Mortensen says that the crucifix tattooed on his character's chest means he's a thief in good standing, while the three church domes on his back signify his three terms in prison.
DVD Details
Below I have listed the details for the DVD containing Eastern Promises.
Release Date: December 23, 2007
Feature Film Runtime: 1 hour 40 minutes
MPAA Rating: R for Strong Brutal and Bloody Violence, Some Graphic Sexuality, Language and Nudity
Widescreen (1.85:1), Color
English Dolby Digital 5.1
French Dolby Digital 5.1
English Captions for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing
French Subtitles
Spanish Subtitles
Secrets and Stories (10 1/2 min.)
Marked for Life (6 1/2 min.)
