Film Review: Mob film gives what’s ‘Promised’
Naomi Watts (“The Painted Veil”) plays Anna, a midwife trying to track down the family of a baby whose mother dies on the operating table.
A diary is the only clue found on the mother and it leads Anna, an average Londoner, to the head of a mob family – Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl, “Leningrad”) – his son, Kirill (Vincent Cassel “Ocean’s Thirteen”) and lackey, Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen, “Alatriste”).
As the diary is translated, it becomes concrete evidence against the mobsters in their various illegal and unsavory acts.
Instead of action advancing the story, hints of the characters’ backgrounds and their shifting alliances drive this plot.
The movie twines around Anna’s alternating selfish and altruistic motives, the dynamics of the mob family and how the two worlds interact.
In an even more intimate scope is the interplay of kind acts and brutality within each character. The voiceover of the dead mother’s naiveté and the cruelty she witnesses becomes as much a character as Mortensen’s Nikolai, who kindly fixes Anna’s bike, then is enough of a badass to kill two fully clothed attackers while naked.
“Male full frontal nudity” is a bit of an understatement. I saw more of Mortensen than of my four Homecoming dates combined.
Even aside from Mortensen’s waggling penis, “Promises” is a beautiful movie. There is a huge use of recurring color against the gray background – mob members are surrounded by rich reds and greens, Anna by pale blues and pinks, and the colors switch as the characters enter into uneven moral ground.
The small details like recurring colors make the movie an amazing experience for the careful watcher, but without actions driving the plot, “Promises” could lose the casual moviegoer.
But like any mob movie, there’s plenty of brutality. Despite all the picturesque scenes in the Russian restaurant or with cherubic children, the movie never drops its threat of force. Between scenes of throat-slitting, the Russians flaunt knives, cigarettes and prison tattoos, while Anna and her family wear the specter of emotional scars.
The strength of this flick is its subtlety and depth, a strong contrast to the general over-the-top abrasiveness of most crime dramas.
‘Eastern Promises’
Release Date: Sept. 21
Director: David Cronenberg
Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts, Vincent Cassel
Genre: Crime drama
Rating: R for strong brutal and bloody violence, some graphic sexuality, language and male full-frontal nudity
Grade: B+
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on Tuesday, September 25th, 2007 at 12:27 am and is filed under Arts & Entertainment, Film Reviews.
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