Eastern Promises' bumps off the cliches
MOVIE REVIEW
by KEN BARTOLOTTA Reporter

"Eastern Promises" stars Viggo Mortensen and Naomi Watts.

Ever since Francis Ford Coppola created a masterpiece in the early seventies with "The Godfather," directors of mob films have been forced to think outside the box.

The film landscape has been littered with failed attempts at this genre, such as "Mobsters," as well as successful endeavors that include "Goodfellas" and more recently "The Departed."

Those films worked for completely opposite reasons: "Goodfellas" because it embraced every wiseguy stereotype to the point of near parody and "The Departed" because it rejected those perceptions and instead chose a more gritty take on gang life.

Now, more than 30 years removed from "The Godfather," we have this dirty little movie titled "Eastern Promises," a film that ushers in a year in which several filmmakers will take a stab at the mob wor ld.

The film, starring a superbly talented Viggo Mortensen, who seems to be shedding both his crown and his beard, a la "The Lord of the Rings" with every new role, is a deep and almost unbearable look into Russian mobsters in London.

The film focuses on a midwife played by Naomi Watts, who stumbles upon a young woman who has been murdered by Russian gangsters, and from there we're led down the dark and twisted alleys of a life spent on the other side of the law.

What makes the movie so compelling is also what makes it hard to watch. It is both gritty and graphic, with these mobsters sparing no expense in keeping their own names clean no matter what the consequence.

In the middle of all of this is Mortensen's character, Nikolai, a sort of stoic symbol of an Old World view that keeps emotions intact but gives violence a free pass.

I'd be remiss to say the guy is conflicted. He's well aware that what he's doing is wrong. He's fully conscious of the life he's chosen but also of the frailty of his own life, which hangs in the balance in this volatile world, where you're only as good as your last hit.

The mob family in "Eastern Promises" is a small one, and it gives you a sense that this way of life is slowly dying. The grip on London that the family exhibits is still firm, but it's slipping, and that decline could also be seen as the fading of traditional values in modern times.

The film is a violent one, but there is a purpose to the madness of director David Cronenberg, who worked with Mortensen in "A History of Violence."

The thing about his films is that as graphic as they may be, the violence is never glorified, never over the top and in the end, displays the very real accountability for such actions.

There doesn't seem to be a message at the end of this film; if anything, it shows us how futile and irrational a life of crime is. The acting is superb and while the directing might be better, the film serves its purpose in banishing the cliches that have become the norm in mob movies.

e-mail: kenb@beenews.com