A History Of Violence

The story centres on a midwife, Anna who tends to a pregnant 14-year-old Russian prostitute. The girl dies giving birth to a daughter but leaves a diary that inculpates in her death the Russian gang boss Semyon, a member of the notorious Vory V Zakone criminal brotherhood. Anna, whose late father was a Russian émigré, courageously investigates and meets the paternal Semyon, owner of an opulent restaurant, the Trans-Siberia, near Smithfield Market. She becomes involved with his violent, drunken, sex-trafficking son Kirill, and the family's chauffeur and enforcer Nikolai. An impassive, quietly spoken man, Nikolai hides behind wrap-around dark glasses and brings to mind Churchill's remark that Russia resembles 'a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma'. It's Christmas week, which in serious movies is a time of stress and irony where goodwill towards men battles with bitterness and malevolence.

First, there is the matter of blood as reality and metaphor. The movie opens with a man having his throat cut in a barber's chair, which is followed by the pregnant prostitute leaving a pool of blood on a chemist's floor and then having a Caesarean in hospital. Another throat-cutting takes place in broad daylight as the victim urinates over a gravestone on his way home from a football stadium. The film's unforgettable climax sees two knife-wielding Chechen criminals in black leather attacking the naked Nikolai in Ironmonger Row municipal steam baths, turning the place into an abattoir as the other bathers run for their lives. It's a challenging scene for Mortensen, infinitely more difficult to play than the naked wrestling match in Women in Love. This leads to a key line in the movie about poetic justice residing in a sample of blood when a DNA test can prove crucial in changing lives and bringing about justice.

Eastern Promises is an exciting story about hypocrisy, decency and different kinds of honour, and about the dark underside of globalisation and multiculturalism. By the excellence of the acting and Cronenberg's attention to detail. It's a chilling, discomfiting picture, and there's a particularly frightening moment when Mueller-Stahl, the brutal patriarch, leaves Anna with the baby in hospital.

SOURCE: theguardian.com