Cronenberg's "Promises" an engrossing creepfest

By Sura Wood

SAN FRANCISCO (Hollywood Reporter) - Ultraviolent, gruesome and riveting, David Cronenberg's trangressive crime drama, "Eastern Promises," might be one of the director's best recent films.

Engineering the cliches of the gangster genre for their own purposes, Cronenberg and screenwriter Steve Knight masterfully orchestrate an atmosphere of danger and dread for a descent into an underworld inhabited by the Russian Mafia in London. That tension is maintained is quite a trick given the presence of stock characters and a script that telegraphs where it's going at the midpoint. A mood of pervasive malevolence and performances by Naomi Watts and Viggo Mortensen certainly make it worth the ride. It opens Friday in select cities.

Arriving after the success of "A History of Violence," "Promises" likely will cross over and draw audiences beyond the art house crowd. A climactic scene, in which a naked, tattooed Mortensen slugs it out with hit men in a steam bath and stabs one in the eye, is sure to generate word-of-mouth.

Like the previous film, this one opens with a casual opera of bloodshed: A man's throat is slashed in a barber shop, and a mysterious pregnant girl, Tatiana, collapses in a pharmacy, blood flowing down her legs. At the hospital, she dies giving birth to a baby who comes under the protective care of Anna (a luminous Watts). A naive midwife, Anna begins an ill-advised investigation into Tatiana's origins, thereby putting herself in jeopardy.

Tatiana's diary leads Anna to Russian restaurant owner Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl, doing a variation on the grandfatherly Nazi, sadist-in-sheep's-clothing he has played before), a silky-voiced, Mafia boss. As she soon learns, the diary implicates Semyon in the rape of the underage Tatiana, an act he committed in front of Kirell (a rabid Vincent Cassel), his vicious, psycho son.

There's a glimmer of attraction between Anna, a Madonna figure, and Nikolai (Mortensen), a sinister mob enforcer who is rising in the ranks. Speaking in a Russian accent and sleek as an eel in head-to-toe Armani, Nikolai dons black leather gloves, a must-have accessory for snipping off fingertips of murder victims and dispatching them to the murky depths of the Thames.

Mortensen, acting the flip side of his character in "A History of Violence" -- where he was a seemingly regular guy whose shady past and violent proclivities caught up with him -- here plays an angel of death with an unexpected capacity for mercy and is a better man than he initially appears. The actor, whose natural reserve serves him well in the role, has a plausible if low-key chemistry with Watts.

The main event, though, is graphic brutality. Shot in harsh, unforgiving light in claustrophobic settings, several scenes -- including a degrading one in a brothel, where Nikolai is forced to prove his manhood with a young prostitute drugged into submission -- are guaranteed to make the audience squirm.

To enjoy "Promises," one has to buy into its artificial, hermetically sealed universe. Perpetually enveloped in darkness, London never looked gloomier. Cronenberg's signature palette of slate grays and artery red -- rendered by veteran production designer Carol Spier -- and Peter Suschitzky's spooky cinematography enhance the uncanny sensation that the film is unfolding within the confines of a distorted psyche rather than being rooted in a known, tangible reality. And what a foul, menacing terrain it is.

Cast:

Nikolai: Viggo Mortensen

Anna: Naomi Watts

Kirill: Vincent Cassel

Semyon: Armin Mueller-Stahl

Director: David Cronenberg; Screenwriter: Steve Knight; Producers: Paul Webster, Robert Lantos; Executive producers: Stephen Garrett, David M. Thompson, Jeff Abberley, Julia Blackman; Director of photography: Peter Suschitzky; Production designer: Carol Spier; Music: Howard Shore; Co-producer: Tracey Seaward; Costume designer: Denise Cronenberg; Editor: Ronald Sanders.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter