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Friday, March 29, 2024

There are probably some people who would confidently accuse David Cronenberg of selling out. Since 2002's "Spider," Cronenberg has seemed to purposefully avoid working in the horror and sci-fi genres in which he made some of his best films. Others would consider it as the director "maturing," as if his previous films were infantile (go rent the classic "Videodrome" and marvel "infantile" social commentary about our sick love affair with television).

I would say he's just expanding his horizons into crime thrillers. It sounds like he's gone completely mainstream, but that's hardly the case, as seen in his new film, "Eastern Promises."

The genius of Cronenberg's two Viggo Mortensen-starring films ("Eastern Promises" and "A History of Violence") is their minimalist plots, unappealing to those hoping for constant twists and turns on the level of such dreck as "Derailed" or "Flightplan." At heart, they are intense character studies and meditations on the nature of violence.

"Eastern Promises" is Mortensen's movie. He plays Nikolai, a driver charged with doing various small jobs for the Russian mob in London. He becomes entangled with a British midwife (Naomi Watts) after she delivers a baby to a mysterious young girl with ties to the mob and comes into possession of the girl's diary, inconveniently written in Russian. Watts' character may be the protagonist, but Nikolai is the one to root for, as Mortensen plays him with such calm intensity that one expects him to get blood spattered on his expensive-looking suit at any moment. It also helps that, unlike many actors, Mortensen pulls off speaking with an accent flawlessly. Despite my familiarity with his work, it never occurred to me that he was actually an American playing a Russian. The same goes for many of the actors in the film, such as the French Vincent Cassel and acclaimed Polish writer/director/dramatist Jerzy Skolimowski as Stepan, Watts' drunken, surly Russian uncle.

It doesn't take a trained eye to see that Cronenberg's interest in body horror remains in his new films. Notice how the camera lingers on the gore as a character gets his throat slashed or as Mortensen cuts the fingers off a murdered mobster to erase all trace of identity. As it occurs, we may grasp at our necks or cradle our own fingers in discomfort - which is exactly what Cronenberg has always wanted of us.

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