2008 Woodie Awards
Cronenberg crafts crime
John Yehambaram
Issue date: 10/8/07 Section: Intermission
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Film director David Cronenberg has again produced a gangster genre masterpiece with his new film "Eastern Promises."
He presents a stripped down and dirty look at a Russian crime family in London from its operations to family ties.
Realism is what makes this movie intricately intriguing, where godfathers are not just virtuous wise leaders, but cunning and heartless masterminds.
The movie begins with a 14-year-old girl with purple track marks on her arm who collapses in a grocery store in a puddle of blood.
Anna (Naomi Watts), an English hospital midwife, but of Russian descent, watches helplessly as the girl dies in childbirth, then attempts to locate the baby's relatives.
Her one clue is a diary, written in Russian. It leads her to an elegant Russian restaurant, in the city's Russian demimonde, run by Semyon, an elderly Russian man (Armin Mueller-Stahl).
He has a soft-spoken benevolence, that from the moment he volunteers to translate the diary, you just know he's trouble, but can't help the fascination with the character.
"Eastern Promises" unpeels like an onion of corruption, with double crosses and deceptions, and ordinary do-gooders (like Anna's old Russian uncle) who are in way over their heads. Praises have to be given to Viggo Mortensen for his performance.
From Aragon in "The Lord of the Rings" to stone-faced undercover cop Nikolai, weaving his way up the ranks of the Russian mafia, his performance is highly impressive.
His Russian clutch calmness and witty roughness display a versatile side to Mortensen that might give him a nod for an Oscar nomination.
This picture surely will not disappoint anyone who feels at home in Cronenberg's brilliantly chilly worlds and its more accessible aspects may well attract movie viewers who are not accustomed to his grim ways.
Cronenberg does not play the race-against-time aspect too emphatically; the suspense here is measured.
The more Semyon becomes impressed with Nikolai's proficiency, the less confident he becomes in his reckless son, Kirill. Russian-Chechen enmity, the breeding ground for criminals provided by old Soviet prisons, the degree to which Scotland Yard can deal with these immigrant gangs, all are touched on while keeping the human drama.
He presents a stripped down and dirty look at a Russian crime family in London from its operations to family ties.
Realism is what makes this movie intricately intriguing, where godfathers are not just virtuous wise leaders, but cunning and heartless masterminds.
The movie begins with a 14-year-old girl with purple track marks on her arm who collapses in a grocery store in a puddle of blood.
Anna (Naomi Watts), an English hospital midwife, but of Russian descent, watches helplessly as the girl dies in childbirth, then attempts to locate the baby's relatives.
Her one clue is a diary, written in Russian. It leads her to an elegant Russian restaurant, in the city's Russian demimonde, run by Semyon, an elderly Russian man (Armin Mueller-Stahl).
He has a soft-spoken benevolence, that from the moment he volunteers to translate the diary, you just know he's trouble, but can't help the fascination with the character.
"Eastern Promises" unpeels like an onion of corruption, with double crosses and deceptions, and ordinary do-gooders (like Anna's old Russian uncle) who are in way over their heads. Praises have to be given to Viggo Mortensen for his performance.
From Aragon in "The Lord of the Rings" to stone-faced undercover cop Nikolai, weaving his way up the ranks of the Russian mafia, his performance is highly impressive.
His Russian clutch calmness and witty roughness display a versatile side to Mortensen that might give him a nod for an Oscar nomination.
This picture surely will not disappoint anyone who feels at home in Cronenberg's brilliantly chilly worlds and its more accessible aspects may well attract movie viewers who are not accustomed to his grim ways.
Cronenberg does not play the race-against-time aspect too emphatically; the suspense here is measured.
The more Semyon becomes impressed with Nikolai's proficiency, the less confident he becomes in his reckless son, Kirill. Russian-Chechen enmity, the breeding ground for criminals provided by old Soviet prisons, the degree to which Scotland Yard can deal with these immigrant gangs, all are touched on while keeping the human drama.