One of the most satisfying things in all of filmdom is watching a great director find a signature muse. These pairings are marriages made in celluloid heaven. Von Sternberg discovered and claimed Marlene Dietrich. Johns, Ford and Wayne, made many movies together. Scorsese had DeNiro (and now he’s trying to recapture that with DiCaprio, bless him). For a brief and glorious time greedy Julianne Moore had both PT Anderson and Todd Haynes to sing her praises. Woody Allen had Diane and then Mia with a little Dianne on the side. Uma Thurman, rather famously, had Quentin Tarantino wrapped around her little finger big toe (If QT would stop dilly dallying between projects there’d probably be more filmic evidence).
I could go on but I should get to the point. After only two films together, David Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen are making a strong bid for the director/muse pantheon. They clearly “get” each other. Let’s pray they never break up.
This simpatico director/actor pair first teamed for the astonishing A History of Violence (2005, my review) in which Cronenberg shed new light on Mortensen’s gift. The 48 year-old New Yorker had previously been known as a solid supporting actor with star potential just waiting to be tapped (and with only Peter Jackson’s truly tapping it for the Lord of the Rings trilogy). Violence revealed Viggo as not just a movie star but a chameleon, too. Better yet, it proved him to be an auteur’s dream –rare is the egoless actor with plenty to be egoistic about, who is there to serve the director’s vision completely.
Eastern Promises begins, like their first pairing, with a gruesome crime that doesn’t include the lead actors, leaving you curious and agitated --who are these people and what further terrible deeds will we witness? Soon afterwards we meet Anna (Naomi Watts) a midwife in London who rescues a baby from its dying mother’s belly in her hospital. The dead woman carries with her only a diary scribbled in Russian. Anna is eager to unveil the mystery of this orphaned baby. Her curiosity leads her straight into the lion’s den, which in this case is a restaurant run by London’s Russian mafia. Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen), a driver for the powerful crime family within, takes an immediate interest in the intrusive blonde.
Promises sinuously winds its way through hospitals, barbershops, riverfronts, ordinary flats, whorehouses, and expat favored restaurants, offering tantalizing glimpses of complex relationships and miserable trapped people. Its on its way to an outstanding climax but it’s snaking, sometimes unsteadily, towards that destination. Promises is often powerfully tense but Cronenberg keeps the actual action and violence to a minimum, saving most of it up for his big bang.
Just before that explosion he smartly hands the movie over to Viggo Mortensen. The actor lifts Eastern Promises way up to heights it could never reach without him. He’s 100% immersed in this hardened Russian criminal with secrets and ambitions of his own. Though most of the movie’s best twists and reveals involve the slow onion peeling of Nikolai, to get at what lies beneath his cold threatening exterior, there’s not a moment that feels false or cheap in retrospect. Just as in A History of Violence this is an actor who can withhold without lying, always staying true to the character while supporting directorial themes and narrative needs. Nikolai stands disrobed before powerful men who study the history of violence in his tattoos (they tell a story you see: his alliances, prison time, crimes…) Then, completely submitting to their dominion over him, he undergoes another tattoo ritual. The crime family is essentially marking their territory. It’s a haunting needle sharp scene, arguably the film's best, with only Nikolai’s enslaved body and the actors numbed lived-in line readings to focus on.
Shortly thereafter the movie reaches its already justifiably famous set piece. Nikolai is cornered, naked and weaponless, in a bathhouse by two men from a rival family who mean to gut him. After this relentless brutal brawl and its enormously creepy final shot, the movie has nowhere to go but down. But even as it winds down, escaping the bathhouse to return to hospitals, restaurants, and riverfronts again, there are smartly acted moments before its strangely tidy and somewhat unsatisfying resolution. These final scenes are odd fits for a movie that’s been memorably messy and easily sidetracked with subplots and character bits.
Eastern Promises is nowhere near as strong thematically or as tightly structured as A History of Violence, but it still delivers a cinematic jolt. Viewed as a mutual declaration of love between filmmaker and muse, though, it delivers fully. Consider A History of Violence Cronenberg’s gift to Mortensen, unlocking the greatness within a slowly ascending movie star. Eastern Promises then is the actor's return favor, elevating a minor auteur picture to a major event with his mesmerizing character creation.
Another worthless so-called review in the form of "Viggo this and Viggo that" publicity ga-ga that blatantly ignores all other equally well performed actors like Naomi Watts in particular, Armin Mueller-Stahl (both Oscar-nominee) and Vincent Cassel.