Mini Review - "Eastern Promises"

I have never been a Cronenberg fan. I have never really been a fan of grotesque and violent movies like these. Human suffering is never pleasurable for me to watch, and I usually look away. Right now my loving partner is engrossed in “This is England” and I cannot really bring myself to watch it. I just know something bad is coming, and I do not want to see it. I know it exists, I read it everyday, but to watch people being humiliated or tortured/beaten does not entertain me in the slightest.

However “Eastern Promises” I did like, not love, but like. This was mainly for the three central performances of Armand Mueller-Stahl, Vincent Cassel and Viggo Mortensen and also for the overwhelming homoeroticism.

Many have said that Naomi Watts did little in the film, but this is simply not true. She did amazing amounts with what little she was given, but in the end this is a mans movie.

At Christmas Anna (Watts) meets a heavily pregnant and dying young Russian teenager who dies while giving birth. Anna resolves to try and trace the baby’s lineage by having her uncle translate the diary she finds in the girls purse.
This brings her into contact with the mysterious and charismatic Russian-born Nikolai Luzhin (Mortensen) is a driver for one of London's most notorious organized crime families of Eastern European origin. The family itself is part of the Vory V Zakone criminal brotherhood. Headed by Semyon (Stahl), whose courtly charm as the welcoming proprietor of the plush Trans-Siberian restaurant impeccably masks a cold and brutal core.
Semyon’s son Kirill (Cassel) is a disappointment. Constantly drunk and playing about, but never having sex with, young Russian prostitutes. Krill is the likely father of this child. The deeper Anna investigates the deeper she puts herself in danger.

While the story in rather basic and the violence is indeed bloody and brutal (I really hated the fact I had to look away during the bath house scene. When else will I get to see the luscious Viggo naked and steamy?) what makes this rise above other films in this genre is the performances.

Mortensen is amazing. Such a subtle and gifted actor, he can make simple gestures and facial movements convey volumes of his character, and he does all this with a perfect Russian accent. This is a performance that could have come off as two dimensional in a lesser actors hands, fortunately we got a great one. It may not win awards, but the best ones never do.
Armand Mueller-Stahl is all warm and cuddly as the proprietor of the family restaurant, but in an instant his eyes grow dark and face tightens into a stony scowl. His Seymon is terrifying. You know at any moment he can give the order to have someone killed, or simply do it himself. So wonderful to see older actors getting a chance with such juicy roles this year.

This lastly brings me to Cassel. All paranoia and panic, Cassel invests so much depth into Krill that at the end of the film, when you learn of why he s a disappointment to his father, you feel sorry for him. Yes he is a coward, but one by his fathers making, constantly trying to be what he thinks a real man should be, but drinking himself crazy because he just does not have it in him.
Cronenberg has made a film about how hard it is to not be accepted by your own family, and how you have to look to others for the love and acceptance you crave. B