Ryan Chartrand
It’s always depressing when a film like “Good Luck Chuck” makes three times more money at the box office when an actually good film (i.e. “Eastern Promises”) is just too dark for the casual moviegoer.
Sure, director David Cronenberg is a creepy guy who loves making brutally violent films set in uncomfortable environments, but is it really that hard to pass up a great story over Jessica Alba’s ass?
What makes “Eastern Promises” a delightfully charming film about slitting throats, prostitution, rape, violence and heroin isn’t the fact that it calls for all Russians to leave their country for those very reasons, but the fact that it’s honest in so many ways.
From start to finish, Cronenberg paints a world that’s so unnervingly dark and ruthless that you wish it wasn’t real. Surprisingly, this world is London, the same place in which the beautiful Queen of England lives. But as “Eastern Promises” shows, many Russian women (i.e. prostitutes) migrated from Russia to the West to start a better life. Despite the hope in these promises of freedom, the Russian mafia simply followed them and continued to control their lives.
One pregnant Russian girl who is promised a better life in London and is ultimately turned into a Russian mafia slave finds her way into the hospital room of a midwife, played by Naomi Watts. The girl dies after giving birth, but her secrets don’t. Watts takes the girl’s diary, which contains information the Russian mafia would rather not be revealed. A newly hired Russian mafia driver (Viggo Mortensen), who oddly enough has a conscience, is sent to retrieve the diary.
But beneath the film’s endless secrets that naturally lead to many deaths, there is a subtle theme of family. Certainly in a mafia movie it can be expected, but the way Cronenberg contrasts such a delicate and heartwarming theme in such a bleak, unforgiving world makes “Eastern Promises” what it is. Yet at the same time, there is no moral or message being pushed out of the film. The only message emanating from “Eastern Promises” is a bitter cold wind of reality about Russian life. Ultimately, however, this also gives the film its weakness.
When you decide to make a film as dark and unwelcoming as Cronenberg loves to make, it takes on a great risk of turning away many moviegoers. People tend to not want to sit in a gloomy, depressing room for two hours when a world of sunshine and football wait for them on the outside (hence the low box office results). While “Eastern Promises” has a good enough story to make the film worthwhile, Dane Cook tends to win against pitiful Russians on a Saturday night.
If there is any reason to see “Eastern Promises,” however, it’s to see an incredible performance from Mortensen, the one actor from “The Lord of the Rings” who has continued being an incredible actor following the trilogy (and no, Viggo, “Hidalgo” doesn’t count as a success). Mortensen was even bold enough to take on a visceral fight scene while naked in a shower. Let’s just say it ends with your jaw on the floor, whether you like it or not.
“Eastern Promises” may not appear to be the most welcoming film of 2007, but it is one of the few good ones. While it can promise an unsettling, powerful story with great acting, the foreign, disconnected nature of the film coupled with Cronenberg’s decision to direct it in such a discomforting manner makes “Eastern Promises” one of those films you love the first time but can’t seem to want to experience a second time.