Go see this movie now
Just doing my part to see that Eastern Promises, which just went wide this weekend after premiering in just 15 theaters on September 14, gets the word of mouth that it deserves. It should get a big audience, not only because it is a taut crime story that manages to have a very personal, small story at its center, but also in large part because of Viggo Mortensen’s mesmerizing performance.
Viggo plays Nikolai, the chauffeur and clean-up man to a Russian mob family in London, whose path crosses with midwife Anna (a subtle, affecting Naomi Watts) when she innocently knocks on the crooks’ restaurant/mafia front while trying to find the family of a teenage Russian prostitute who dies in labor. “I am just driver,” he tells Anna. “I go left, I go right. I go straight ahead. That’s it.” As soon as those words are out of his mouth, of course, you know that they are not true, something that Anna, a haunted woman hellbent on finding out the truth in part to quiet her own demons, catches on to. Nikolai has layers upon layers, which he carefully hides underneath ultra-coiffed gangster hair, a trim Armani suit and a face like a mask. How appropriate that late in the movie, when Nikolai is attacked in a bathhouse and literally strips down to his heavily tattooed body during the fight of his life, you still sense, rightly, that you still haven’t gotten the full story.
If you’ve heard nothing else about this movie, you’ve probably heard about that bathhouse scene, in which Viggo’s family jewels are in plain sight from varying angles. First of all, applause, applause for having such a hot body, Aragorn. Second of all, for having the guts (lacking in most actors) to show it, and do it for the best reason: because it was essential to the story.
Third of all, for hooking up with a visionary like director David Cronenberg for the second time (the first time was A History of Violence, which exposed the less-than-squeaky-clean core of American mores better than anything in recent memory), and turning yourself into the most interesting actor working at the moment.
