Eastern Promises

Eastern Promises
File:Eastern promises.jpg Theatrical release poster
Directed by	David Cronenberg
Written by	Steve Knight
Produced by	Paul Webster Robert Lantos
Starring	Naomi Watts Viggo Mortensen Vincent Cassel Armin Mueller-Stahl Brice Stratford
Cinematography	Peter Suschitzky
Music by	Howard Shore
Distributed by	Focus Features
Release dates	September 8, 2007

Eastern Promises is a 2007 drama and thriller feature film directed by David Cronenberg. The screenplay was written by Steve Knight, whose previous credits include Stephen Frears' Dirty Pretty Things. The film premiered September 8, 2007 at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Cast

• Viggo Mortensen as Nikolai Luzhin
• Naomi Watts as Anna Khitrova
• Vincent Cassel as Kirill
• Armin Mueller-Stahl as Semyon
• Sinéad Cusack as Helen
• Donald Sumpter as Yuri
• Jerzy Skolimowski as Stepan

Plot synopsis

Anna Khitrova (Naomi Watts), a midwife at a London hospital, finds a Russian-language diary on the body of a Tatiana, a fourteen-year-old girl who dies in childbirth. She also finds a card for the Trans-Siberian restaurant, which is owned by Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl), a boss in the Russian Mafia or vory v zakone ("thieves in law"). Anna thus sets out to track down the girl's family so that she can find a home for the dead mother's baby girl. Anna’s mother Helen (Sinéad Cusack) does not discourage her, but Anna’s Russian-born uncle Stepan (Jerzy Skolimowski), whom Anna asks for help with translation of the diary, urges caution. Through Semyon and her uncle, Anna comes to learn that Semyon and his unstable son, Kirill (Vincent Cassel), had abused, forced into prostitution, and raped the girl.

Semyon's driver is the Russian-born Nikolai Luzhin (Viggo Mortensen), who serves as the family's enforcer, dumping dead bodies in the Thames River. As Nikolai's star rises within the vory, Semyon sponsors him as a full member, due in part to Nikolai's protection of Semyon's bumbling son who authorizes a hit on a rival Chechen vory leader. The hit was not ran by Semyon and was ill-advised with the Chechen gang now coming to London to seek vengeance. Semyon, impressed by Nikolai's knowledge of the criminal underworld and tolerance and protection of his son, hatches a plan with Nikolai, now a full member of the vory, so that Nikolai would temporarily take Kirill's place during the meeting with the Chechens at the baths. As Chechens attack Nikolai thinking he was Kirill, Nikolai is able to kill them all, ending up in the hospital with lots of wounds as the result.

It is revealed near the end of the film that Nikolai is actually a Scotland Yard informer on the mob. As part of his undercover duties, Nikolai was able to read Anna's diary before Semyon had it destroyed and hatched a plan so that Semyon would go down for Tatiana's rape, making Nikolai the most powerful member of the London branch of the mob (more powerful than the unstable Kirill who, in a very homophobic mob society of the film, is also thought to be a homosexual). The plan works, with Anna eventually raising the baby and Nikolai becoming the crime boss.

Production

Shooting began in November 2006, and various scenes were filmed in St John's Street, Farringdon, London. Filming also took place in Broadway Market, Hackney. The entrance to the "Ankara Social Club" of the film is actually the front door of a residential flat. The Broadway Market hair dresser known as "Broadway Gents Hairstylist" was changed to "Azims Hair Salon", where in the film one of the Russians is murdered. The owner decided to keep the majority of the shopfront after filming. In the original script, the name was "Ozims Hair Salon", but it was later changed to "Azims" as there is no such name as Ozim in Turkish.

According to the New York Daily News Viggo Mortensen studied Russian gangsters and the tattoos they wear, and also consulted a documentary on the subject called The Mark of Cain. The tattoos that he wore were, according to the New York Daily News, so real that when he went into a Russian restaurant in London, a Russian couple sitting next to him became very quiet when they saw the tattoos on his hands, but since Mortensen could not speak ten words of Russian the mood of the restaurant changed back to normal. From that day on he washed his tattoos away when he went off the set.

Release

The film premiered September 8, 2007 at the Toronto International Film Festival where it won the Audience Prize for best film on September 15, 2007. Eastern Promises opened in limited release in Russia on September 13, 2007.

In the United States and Canada, the film opened in limited release in 15 theaters on September 14, 2007 and grossed $547,092 — averaging $36,472 per theater. The film opened in wide release in the United States and Canada on September 21, 2007 (expanding to 1,404 theaters) and ranked #5 at the box office, grossing $5,659,133 — an average of $4,030 per theater. The film has grossed $6,943,466 domestically as of September 24, 2007.

The film will be shown October 17, 2007 at the London Film Festival in the United Kingdom.

Critical reception

As of September 25, 2007 on Rotten Tomatoes, 89% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 123 reviews. On Metacritic, the film had an average score of 82 out of 100, based on 35 reviews.

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four stars and wrote "Eastern Promises is no ordinary crime thriller, just as Cronenberg is no ordinary director", and said "Cronenberg has moved film by film into the top rank of directors, and here he wisely reunites with Mortensen" who "digs so deeply into the role you may not recognize him at first." Ebert said the film has a fight scene that "sets the same kind of standard that The French Connection set for chases. Years from now, it will be referred to as a benchmark." Ebert praised the casting directors, saying the choice of Mortensen was "pitch-perfect." Ebert also said "What the director and writer do here is not unfold a plot, but flay the skin from a hidden world." J. Hoberman of the Village Voice said "I've said it before and hope to again: David Cronenberg is the most provocative, original, and consistently excellent North American director of his generation", saying "neither Scorsese nor Spielberg, and not even David Lynch, has enjoyed a comparable run." Hoberman said the film is "directed with considerable formal intelligence and brooding power" and continues the trend of "murderous family dramas" seen in Spider and A History of Violence. Hoberman called the film "graphic but never gratuitious in its violence", "garish yet restrained", "a masterful mood piece", "deceptively generic" and said the film "suggests a naturalized version of the recent Russian horror flick Night Watch." When describing the cast, Hoberman said "Mueller-Stahl may be perfunctory...but Vincent Cassel literally flings himself into [his role]" and "Mortensen is even more electrifying as Nikolai than in [A History of Violence]" Los Angeles Times critic Carina Chocano said "Expertly realized and gunmetal slick, Eastern Promises whirs along with perfect efficiency, but doesn't stir much in the way of visceral horror despite its penchant for treating the human body like a chicken carcass on a block." Chocano wrote "the movie is in many ways a B-movie companion piece to A History of Violence", and noted similarities to The Godfather. Chocano said "the movie is much less corporeal" than Cronenberg's previous films and wrote that Cronenberg's career "has in some ways been a reprise of the greatest fears of the 1950s, so it makes sense that technophobia and fear of the unrecognizable self have given way to xenophobia and fear of the unrecognizable society."

Chris Vognar of The Dallas Morning News gave the film a "B+" and said "The film's genius performance belongs to the venerable Armin Mueller-Stahl, who plays the family head with a twinkling eye and an air of avuncular, Old World charm." Vognar wrote "Where some may see melodrama, Mr. Cronenberg locates timeless, elemental struggles between good and evil, right and wrong. But he makes sure to place a mysterious gray area front and center, personified here by Mr. Mortensen's Nikolai", writing "Nikolai Luzhin is...like Ray Bradbury's Illustrated Man...only more dangerous" and "scarily enigmatic." Vognar wrote that Eastern Promises shares themes of "ambiguous identity and rage-soaked duality" with A History of Violence and said both films "have a lock-step precision and both take a sly kind of joy in subverting genre expectations." Vognar said Eastern Promises "is a little too mechanical for its own good...but the mechanics also produce an admirable crispness and sense of purpose, a sense that the man behind the camera knows exactly what he's doing at all times." Film Journal International critic Doris Toumarkine said the film is a "highly entertaining but sometimes revolting look at a particularly venal branch of the Russian mob." Toumarkine wrote that Mortensen and Watts "are intriguing moral counterpoints. They are also the key ingredients that make Eastern Promises a highly delectable and cinematically rich borsht that upscale film fans will devour." She described Mortensen's performance as "startling," called Watts "touching," Cassel "particularly delicious," but said "Mueller-Stahl, Cusack, and Skolimowski don’t have as much to chew on." She said the film "is also blessed by Howard Shore's restrained score, which lets the film’s other estimable elements breathe through." Toumarkine also said the film is "essentially a character-driven crime thriller but is also a bloody tour de force laced with considerable nudity and sexually bold content that will rattle the squeamish." Todd McCarthy of Variety said the film is "a superbly wrought yarn" and "instantly takes its place among David Cronenberg's very best films", and said "it's possible that Cronenberg has never made a film of such consistent tone and control." McCarthy wrote "it's Mortensen's picture" and that his performance "recalls the magnetic work of Hollywood's greats of yore", "Cassel is at the top of his game", Mueller-Stahl is "mesmerizing", and Skolimowski was an inspired choice." McCarthy said that fans of Cronenberg will surely appreciate the film and said "the way [Steve Knight] spirals and layers his story out from [a] simple beginning is thrilling to behold." Todd McCarthy wrote there are "some great twists and turns-of-events, all the better for their subtlety" and that the ending is "eminently satisfying."

Bruce Westbrook of the Houston Chronicle gave the film one star out of four and said it had a "contrived plot" and wrote "what it's really about, more than sensitivity for displaced people or social analyses, is violence — hideous, gruesome, over-the-top violence." Westbrook said "For Cronenberg, such cheap sensationalism is business as usual, and this far into his career, that business has slipped into artistic bankruptcy", saying that the "history of violence...better served his early phase as a director of hard-hitting horror." He said "in some ways David Cronenberg seems more surgeon than film director. Executing scenes with surgical precision, he doesn't flinch at the sight of blood or the cuts that cause it." Westbrook wrote the film "isn't about Russian gangs so much as Cronenberg's own dark passions not just for violence but excruciating carnage, which he brandishes mercilessly" and that the film was "a stifling descent into grim shock and disturbing awe."

External links

• Official site
• Eastern Promises at IMDb
• Eastern Promises at Rotten Tomatoes
• Eastern Promises at Metacritic
• Eastern Promises at Box Office Mojo
• Eastern Promises at AllMovie
• Official MP3 Audio Clips

Interviews

• Film Comment interview with David Cronenberg
• Village Voice interview with Cronenberg
• GreenCine Daily interviews Cronenberg & Viggo Mortensen
• Viggo Mortensen interview
• Rotten Tomatoes Interview with Cronenberg and Mortensen 2007