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Title: Eastern Promises
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David Cronenberg is without a doubt one of the most unusual directors out there. He makes films that are usually dripping with quality, yet his films are rarely embraced because he has a tenancy to keep the audience at a distance, giving the impression that you are an outside observer as opposed to identifying with the characters. Cronenbergs previous film “A History of Violence” broke this rule and gave audiences characters to like and relate to. “Eastern Promises” however returns to the former style of giving us a well made film that doesn’t let us embrace it. The revolves around a Russian born woman named Anna Khitrova, who works as a nurse in one of London’s most prestige hospitals. One night a pregnant teenager dies on the operating table, bleeding to death but not before giving birth to a baby girl.
Anna raids the woman’s nurse to find no identification, but only a diary written in Russian, which she can not read. She seeks a translation from a Russian chef named Semyon (Armin Mueller-Sthal), who translates the diary but has reservations about the contents. It turns out the diary revels disturbing information about Semyon, who is actually a big time mob boss for the Vory V Zakone, and he has reservations about some unflattering information that turns up in the diary. He sends one of his henchmen, Nikolai Luzhin, a violent man who has various tattoos all over his body, to keep an eye on her. This is business as usual for Nikolai, but a conflict comes when the notorious killer fears he might be having feelings for Anna. On one hand, he is more kind to her then he needs to be.
On the other hand, there is a point where he brutally beats and kills two mobsters in a public bath (in his birthday suit none-the-less). This is all great stuff, and on paper it makes this sound like a potential Best Picture nominee. The problem is the movie is strangely cold and distant, to the point where we watch the movie with a yearning to be more involved in it then we really are. Let’s take the bathroom fight I mentioned earlier. It makes sense to talk about this scene since it’s the scene that leaves the biggest impression on you when you leave the theater. The fight is brutal. Bloody, violent, with bones snapping, teeth gnashing, shin being cut up. It’s difficult to watch, yet there is a craft and skill behind this scene that we’ve never really seen before in (what is essentially) a street brawl before.
I feel this scene will be looked back on as a milestone in film making, as it shows the skill Cronenberg has a director. Yet the problem comes after the fight, where everyone is sort of neutral about the fight. They know what happens, but we don’t really get to see them react to the fight. The characters have time to switch between speaking English and Russian throughout the film, but they don’t seem to really react to any major events in this film. This puts the minor moments in a bit of a strange place because they too feel soulless, giving you the impression that you are nothing more then...yep, you guessed it: An outside observer. I don’t know why Cronenberg decided to film the movie this way, but I can’t recommend a movie that is without soul. “Eastern Promises” is dark, stylish, and intriguing. It's just not emotional, deep, or memorable.
- -Review By Kevin T. Rodriguez- -
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