DVD REVIEW: "Eastern Promises"

"Eastern Promises" promises more than it delivers.

For a long time I thought director Dave Cronenberg and screenwriter Steven Knight were going to offer an interesting study in human nature, the battle between the good and the evil that resides within the soul of man. The man in question here is Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen) who is introduced to us as the chauffeur for a Russian mob family living in London. Nikolai is cold, ruthless, just about everything you would expect from a mob functionary. But with a glance here, a shift of the head there, Nikolai also shows a streak of compassion. So are we going to witness Nikolai wrestle with his own inner demons or simply wrestle two assassins while naked in a steam bath?

Unfortunately it's only going to be the latter. However, having said that, the steam bath scene is as good a fight scene as you're likely to see this year outside "The Bourne Ultimatum." I'm not going to tell you what is revealed three quarters of the way through the movie, but we learn something about Nikolai that I, at least, didn't expect which made me realize the ultimate inner showdown I wanted to see was simply not going to happen.

No matter. Although we do not get the character study Cronenberg seemed to be promising us for a good part of the the movie's 100-minute running time, what "Eastern Promises" does deliver is a superbly acted mob thriller, one of the best in the genre.

Anna (Naomi Watts, pictured above right with Mortensen) is a midwife working in a London hospital where a 14-year-old hemorrhaging pregnant girl is admitted. When the teenager dies while giving birth, Anna tries to track down her family so that the newborn won't wind up in England's foster child system. She finds a diary written in Russian among the girl's possession along with a business card from a local Russian restaurant. She goes to the restaurant where she meets its proprietor Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl).

Mueller-Stahl does something wonderful in his opening scene. At first he comes across as the loving benevolent grandfatherly type who would love to be able to help Anna but admits that the girl in question probably ate in his restaurant just one time. But when Anna lets it be known that the girl kept a diary, Mueller-Stahl's demeanor changes, but only ever so slightly--just enough for us to pick up something menacing behind his old-world charm, but not enough for Anna to notice. It is a stunning piece of acting.

It turns out Semyon is the godfather of the Russian mob that deals in the sex-slave trade and the more Anna tries to learn about the victim's background, the more of a liability she becomes to Semyon, his son Kirill (niftily played by Vincent Cassel as a Sonny Corleone wanna-be) and, of course, Nikolai.

Interestingly for a mob thriller, no one gets shot in "Eastern Promises," but plenty of bloody carnage is inflicted by knives and when Nikolai says at one point "Now I'm going to do his fingers," he means he's going to cut the person's fingernails between the first and second joints.

Maybe the question to ponder here is exactly how much evil must be inflicted in order to achieve justice. Nah, that's too insidious, even for Cronenberg.

Grade: B+