Okay, somebody help me out with this. Did I miss the memo where director David Cronenberg announced he was going to stop putting endings on his movies? Because if I didn't, then someone better let him know that only a small portion of the U.S.(and the rest of the pla-net) liked the so-called "ending" of The Sopranos.
It's almost impossible to believe that one of the foremost maverick and visceral directors of our time(The Dead Zone, Scanners, Naked Lunch, The Fly, Dead Ringers, The Brood) has delivered a film as bland and pedestrian as Eastern Promises. Yes, the once mighty Cronenberg has had his flirtations with cinematic crapola such as the first Crash in 1996 and eXistenZ, but more often than not he has given us films that were both figurative and literal gut-wrenchers(Videodrome). Movies that refused to leave our minds, even when we might want them to...and I mean that in the best way. Cronenberg's latest, however, leaves a lot to be desired in its story structure, its pacing and most notably its ending(or lack thereof).
Semyon(Armin Mueller-Stahl) is the head of the English-based branch of the Russian Vory V Zakone criminal brotherhood. A grand-fatherly type who runs a Trans-Siberian restaurant as a front, his facade masks an unblinkingly brutal personality. He fled the KGB in Russia in order to rebuild his empire in London, and all his plans might come crashing down due to the carelessness of his son Kirill (Vincent Cassel). Kirill is a n'er-do-well of a son, constantly making stupid mistakes that luckily his best friend and chauffeur, wannabe mobster Nikolai(Viggo Mortensen) is always nearby to clean up. Kir- ill's latest mistake is twofold: he has improperly disposed of a body, which is later found by Scotland Yard and which could lead the police back to them, based on the body's tattoos which tell the tale of the owner's involvement with Vory V. His other is the passing of an escaped pregnant prostitute, who dies in the care of Anna(Naomi Watts), a midwife at a North London hospital. The dead girl, Tatiana (Sarah-Jeanne Labrosse) had a diary with her, you see...and that diary tells the whole story of Vory V, her ordeals within that organiza-tion, and who the father of her baby(which lives, thanks to Anna and a doctor) really is. Coupled with the fact Kirill is keeping a really big secret from his dad, is it any wonder Semyon is plenty upset at him?
David Cronenberg used to be a master of pacing. No matter the subject matter, his films used to almost fly by before you knew it, and you'd find yourself wanting to watch again whichever of his pictures you had just viewed, in order to comprehend it all. I have never had a problem if a film takes its time to tell its story, so long as the story structure itself is sound and the actors give their all. But while the acting is solid all the way around in Eastern Promises, I was constant-ly thinking to myself "Is something going to happen soon?" True, there are moments of unabashed violence with cause--Cronenberg has admittedly always had an obsession with "the flesh", as attested to on his bonus documentary on the A History of Violence DVD--and said moments are beautifully choreographed. Make no mistake; with its numerous throat slashings, knife cuts to the body, finger severing and eye gouges, Eastern Promises is one brutal film(by way of com-pensation for the ladies, I guess, Viggo has finally consented to some full frontal during a fight scene in a Russian bath). But in between those visceral moments, not a whole heck of a lot happens, lemme tell you. There are numerous mentions made of having to do some-thing about Anna and her knowledge of the diary, or disposing of Anna's coincidentally Russian uncle, who has managed to translate said diary. But with the exception of the opening prologue in which a teen is inducted into the mob and Nikolai's bath house brawl, no one really does anything to anyone or about anything else.
Whether Russian, Italian, Chinese or plain ol' made-in-the-U.S.A., the mob is basically the mob no matter where you go. There are some variances in the rules and traditions yes, but it's basically the same beast. Hence, Cronenberg burdens Eastern Promises with more than its fair share of mob cliches: loyalty to the family, the young bucks wanting to replace the old stags, the introduction of new blood into the gang, having Nikolai appointed as a "made man" so to speak, along with adherence to "The Code" of silence in relation to mob affairs. Ah, but remember what Captain Barbossa once said in the original Pirates of the Caribbean: "The code be more like guide-lines than actual rules".
And Nikolai seems more than willing to adhere to this philosophy. He's a mobster with a conscience, you see: he helps hookers escape from the mob. When ordered to kill someone who's annoying the boss, he snags them a one-way ticket to Ireland instead and tells them to lie low. He's told to never look at Anna again, but goshdarnit! --those English accents are just so alluring...
Sometimes a movie will have a well-written screenplay, but the ineptness of the attached director will totally ruin whatever great pre-mise was ever there(witness Joss Whedon and his original script for the Buffy the Vampire Slayer film back in 1992). However, Eastern
Promises suffers as much from its writing as its direction. As much as Cronenberg's admiration for long shots down darkened alleys and lingering on the forlorn look on Kirill's face as he watches Nikolai do it with a hooker are at fault, some of the blame for this failure must surely rest on the shoulders of screenwriter Steven Knight(Amazing
Grace, Dirty Pretty Things). Having originally come from the realm of television, where one has the entirety of a season to develop characters and their story arcs, perhaps Knight was unaware that in a two hour film, there is only a limited time in which to establish who a character is, what they want, and how they will/won't achieve their goal before the audience begins to slip into a coma. Surely no one who takes so much time to give us a character as inherently nasty as Cassel's Kirill--and then has this character completely wimp out when he's about to perform what must inarguably be the nastiest deed of his career--would be aware of this fact.
Cronenberg performs some other odd slights of cinematic hand as well. For instance, Sarah-Jeanne Labrosse(Human Trafficking) only has one speaking scene as the escaped prostitute Tatiana, and the rest of her personal story is told in narrative voiceover...a trick which becomes more annoying the more frequently it's being done in modern cinema. Yet Cronenberg doesn't allow Labrosse to do her own narration! The voice of Tatiana is performed by another actress entirely, Tatiana Maslany(The Messengers). If there was something wrong with the way Labrosse's voice sounded, or if her accent wasn't convincing enough(sounded decent from where I was seated), why hire her at all? That must be as humiliating for an actor as when Laurence Fishburne dubbed the titular hero's voice in Fantastic Four 2: Rise of the Silver Surfer, when the body action was done by Doug Jones! Or maybe as humiliating as having Terence Stamp act out his scenes not with other actors in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, but with a broom instead! Way to give props to someone's craft, Mr. C!
Then again, maybe Ms. Labrosse was the only smart person on the set, and chose to opt out of doing voiceover to avoid further con-nection with the film. After all, if the director himself can't find the emotional investment to place a clear ending on his film which at least attempts to answer the major questions posed within his own movie, then why should anyone else care? Bozhe moi!
Official Archives of LanceReviews...
Broken Promises
Looking for a "thriller" about the Russian mob? Look elsewhere...
Tattooed bodies tell the story in the Russian mob. There wouldn't be much ink wasted on this film's corpse..
"And after you kill the people, it'll be time to make the donuts."
Naomi Watts plays a midwife who finds herself unwillingly pulled into the world of the Russian mob.
"Stop trying to get away, Naomi! You signed the contract just like me, and now you're stuck in this film with the rest of us, dammit!".
"Very good. Very nice. Now, to coin a phrase from 'Team America'..."
What the--? Didn't I put up a picture just like this in my "Shoot 'Em Up" review?!
