David Cronenberg must be growing up. His early movies depended largely on the shock value of disgusting special effects. Watching them was like skimming through a medical text of skin diseases. Then he made "Dead Ringers," which was vertigenously creepy without being revolting. And now "Eastern Promises," which is a richly atmospheric story of the Russian mafia set in London. There are two or three scenes of violence, but mostly brief in their gore.
The problem here is that Cronenberg has dispensed with much of the facile special effects but, unlike "Dead Ringers", there isn't a single dramatic trajectory to replace them. The characters and the status-sphere they inhabit are confusing.
Well -- the story first. Naomi Watts is a London nurse who attends a birth at which the underage mother dies and the baby girl is saved. Watts finds a diary in the girl's purse, written in Russian, and her attempts to have it translated by a local restaurateur, Armin Mueller-Stahl, leads to some sticky business with the Russian mob. It seems the diary reveals that Mueller-Stahl's reckless son is the father of the baby, and has committed some other unsavory and illegal acts. Vigo Mortenson is the Russian go-between, with Watts on one side trying to save the baby, and the mob on the other, trying to cut the throat of anyone who is in a position to endanger the mob and its activities. It's an indication of the script's confused logic that it's never made clear just what these activities are -- something about smuggling something in television sets imported from Afghanistan. It's probably heroin, though no one mentions it.
Watts and her story could easily have been written out of the script, leaving us with a quasi-mafia movie. The Russian gangsters all have complicated family ties, rival mobs, and traitors. They do a lot of fulsome eating in Russian-themed restaurants. (More Russian than the Russian Tea Room used to be.) They have "made men," who wear multiple tattoos. The highest ranking capos have stars of loyalty tattooed over their hearts. The favored murder technique is the slit throat. There are three killings -- the last being a thoroughly brutal one between three men in a Spritzbad.
Performances are pretty good. Naomi Watts is big-eyed and beautiful. Mortenson seems made of steel and speaks slowly and sparely, the way Robert DeNiro did in "The Godfather II." Armin Mueller-Stahl is miscast, in my expert and unimpeachable opinion. He's not a ruthless capo. He's somebody nice uncle who shows up with Christmas presents. About a third of the dialog is in Russian and the accents are passable, especially considering that none of the main players are Russian, but rather American of Danish descent, Welsh, German, French, and Polish. I don't claim this judgment is flawless but I believe my friend Julieta Vladimirovna would back me up on it. Or maybe she wouldn't. Let's not ask her.
The pace of the movie is slow and deliberate, which doesn't help clear up any of the confusion. Much of the time, it rather sits there with the animation of a stuffed golupke. It's worth seeing because of the luscious texture, the settings, but probably not worth seeing twice.
The problem here is that Cronenberg has dispensed with much of the facile special effects but, unlike "Dead Ringers", there isn't a single dramatic trajectory to replace them. The characters and the status-sphere they inhabit are confusing.
Well -- the story first. Naomi Watts is a London nurse who attends a birth at which the underage mother dies and the baby girl is saved. Watts finds a diary in the girl's purse, written in Russian, and her attempts to have it translated by a local restaurateur, Armin Mueller-Stahl, leads to some sticky business with the Russian mob. It seems the diary reveals that Mueller-Stahl's reckless son is the father of the baby, and has committed some other unsavory and illegal acts. Vigo Mortenson is the Russian go-between, with Watts on one side trying to save the baby, and the mob on the other, trying to cut the throat of anyone who is in a position to endanger the mob and its activities. It's an indication of the script's confused logic that it's never made clear just what these activities are -- something about smuggling something in television sets imported from Afghanistan. It's probably heroin, though no one mentions it.
Watts and her story could easily have been written out of the script, leaving us with a quasi-mafia movie. The Russian gangsters all have complicated family ties, rival mobs, and traitors. They do a lot of fulsome eating in Russian-themed restaurants. (More Russian than the Russian Tea Room used to be.) They have "made men," who wear multiple tattoos. The highest ranking capos have stars of loyalty tattooed over their hearts. The favored murder technique is the slit throat. There are three killings -- the last being a thoroughly brutal one between three men in a Spritzbad.
Performances are pretty good. Naomi Watts is big-eyed and beautiful. Mortenson seems made of steel and speaks slowly and sparely, the way Robert DeNiro did in "The Godfather II." Armin Mueller-Stahl is miscast, in my expert and unimpeachable opinion. He's not a ruthless capo. He's somebody nice uncle who shows up with Christmas presents. About a third of the dialog is in Russian and the accents are passable, especially considering that none of the main players are Russian, but rather American of Danish descent, Welsh, German, French, and Polish. I don't claim this judgment is flawless but I believe my friend Julieta Vladimirovna would back me up on it. Or maybe she wouldn't. Let's not ask her.
The pace of the movie is slow and deliberate, which doesn't help clear up any of the confusion. Much of the time, it rather sits there with the animation of a stuffed golupke. It's worth seeing because of the luscious texture, the settings, but probably not worth seeing twice.