Eastern Promises (2007)

Director David Cronenberg’s violent, graphic, hard R film about the Russian mob in London. Naomi Watts plays a half-Russian nurse who takes it upon herself to track down the family of the infant daughter of an immigrant prostitute that died in her care. Her efforts lead her to a prosperous restaurant owning family of Russians, who turn out to be major players in London organized crime. She thusly enters into an artful dance of a relationship with the family’s stoic driver (Vigo Mortensen in a transformative performance). While the gory roughness that shows up so early in the film had me thinking the movie might turn out to be nothing more then a glorified exercise in the maccabe, the characters and their relationships proved intricate and fascinating, developing in complexity until what at first may have seemed a stereotype (Vincent Cassel’s over zealous son to sly mafioso Armin Mueller-Stahl) proves to be stunningly complicated. Defiantly not for all tastes, but a dramatic accomplishment that blooms from what may seem to be a darkly exploitive Hollywood turd. 4 out of 5.