Film Review: Eastern Promises

Liverpool Daily Post

Eastern Promises, (Cert 18, 100 mins)
Stars: Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts, Vincent Cassel, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Sinead Cusack, Donald Sumpter, Jerzy Skolimowski
Directed by David Cronenberg

DIRECTOR David Cronenberg reunites with leading man Viggo Mortensen to explore the dark secrets of a Russian crime family in this bloodthirsty thriller.

Opening with a gory sequence in a barbershop that gives new meaning to a close shave, the film pulls no punches in its depiction of brutality in London’s underworld, as imagined by screenwriter Steven Knight.

Caring midwife Anna Khitrova (Naomi Watts) inadvertently strays into the middle of a gang war when she becomes emotionally attached to a badly injured teenage girl and her newborn baby.

When the young mother dies, Anna steals her diary and begins to translate the Cyrillic text with the help of her mother Helen (Sinead Cusack) and Russian-born uncle Stepan.

The hand-written confessional reveals unspeakable treachery in a clan ruled by Semyon, his son Kirill and gruff chauffeur Nikolai (Mortensen); terrible deeds which Semyon will do anything to keep hidden.

The patriarch makes thinly veiled threats to Anna, determined to keep the past buried, and then Stepan vanishes without trace after an altercation with Nikolai.

Eastern Promises is a tour de force of robust, assured direction and powerful performances.

Violence is used sparingly, but to devastating effect, like the bruising fight in a bathhouse between a completely naked Mortensen and two knife-wielding assailants that ends with the tiled floor and walls spattered in blood.

As tensions escalate, you are left in no doubt that, when the film ends, the dark night of murder and retribution has only just begun.