Eastern Promises
Focus Features, 100mins, R

Directed by
David Cronenberg


Anna  (Naomi Watts) is a midwife working in your average London hospital, when a badly bleeding woman named Tatiana (Sarah-Jeanne Labrosse), who leaves behind a baby and a diary before expiring. Her uncle Yuri  (Donald Sumpter), reads Russian but doesn't really want to get involved, but his sister [and Anna's mother] Helen  (Sinéad Cusack), convinces him to translate the diary, which holds within it a business card for a restaurant owned by a guy named Semyon  (Armin Mueller-Stahl), who is using the place as a cover for his real job, head of the Russian mob.

The diary, of which Anna gives Semyon a copy, implicates him in all sorts of awful stuff, which leads him to dispatch his psychotic son
Kirill  (Vincent Cassel) and smarmy chauffeur/clean up guy Nikolai  (Viggo Mortensen), to take care of the situation. From here things begin to get complicated. For not everyone is what they seem, and romance, albeit rather twisted, plus internal mafia politics begins to take center stage as layer upon layer of intrigue begins unfold in Steve Knight's nuanced script.

The partnership between David Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen is beginning to progress, and although it was brilliant in their previous collaboration, “A History of Violence,” this is something which straddles the line between very, very good and truly great.

While Anna is nominally the main character, it's the relationship between Nickolai, Kirill and Semyon which is the actual focus of the film and the ins and outs of the Russian mob in at the end of it's first generation since the fall of the Communist party, the culture and the human element is thoroughly explored in a particularly graphic way. After all it is David Cronenberg. This is one of those films, which is going to be deservedly showered with award nominations. Definitely worth full price.


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