David Cronenberg is a director that tends to polarize audiences. Either you love him, or you hate him. I’m one of the few people who sways back and fourth depending on the film. I was a fan of his earlier films, and really ended up digging A History of Violence. And I was very excited to see his latest film Eastern Promises.
Have you ever been in a movie for only a few minutes before you knew that you weren’t going to like it? This is what happened to me in the screening room. I sat there in shock. I wanted to leave but chose not to because I had a scheduled roundtable interview with Chronenberg and star Viggo Mortensen. I wanted the film to get better, to draw me in, and I sat around, waiting for something that never came. To be fair, it did improve slightly before offering a total cop out of an ending.
Cronenberg likes to take a traditionally trashy genre story (in this case a mob movie) and elevate it using a slower indie tone and some interesting ideas that usually evoke questions. I have met many people who have left a Cronenberg film calling it boring and slow. I’ve usually been one to (a least internally) say “They just don’t get it.” I know that sounds elitist, because, well it is. But I left Eastern Promises happy that it was over, but not glad that I had seen it. And may-be “I just don’t get it”, or maybe it’s just “such an accomplished film that it’s out of my understanding”, but I’m pretty sure otherwise. Either way, I’m now a lot more excited to see American Gangster and We Own The Night.
Most of the characters are cliches of cliches. They are one dimensional stereotypes with the possible exception of Kirill, which would have been original if it hadn’t been played on The Sopranos last season. Naomi Watts’ character Anna Khitrova is naive to the core. Her sole mission is to protect an innocent baby, but every move she makes puts the baby in further danger. There is a story point late into the film which was entirely unnecessary and felt like something that a studio executive would have fought for in a big Hollywood action movie. Cronenberg should be ashamed for allowing Steve Knight’s character twist to appear in his film. I found a few connections of ideas and plot points to New Testament bible stories to be interesting, but not much more. I would like to discuss these points in the review, but that is impossible without revealing major spoilers from late into the plot. And while these connections maybe interesting at first glance, I have found that there isn’t much substance to the ideas.
And in typical Cronenberg fashion, there are outbursts of excessive gore and violence (sometimes even to a laughable degree). There is one sequence which takes place in a bathhouse which was incredibly intense and bloody. In a better movie it could have been the icing on top of the cake, but it just felt out of place in this film. Viggo Mortensen fangirls will no-doubtedly flock to theaters to see the Lord of the Rings star in the buff. I will offer this cautionary comment: the full frontal nudity does not occur in a love scene with Naomi Watts, but instead in the bloody bathhouse sequence that I just spoke of.
Oh, and I canceled my interview with Cronenberg. I mean, what could I really ask him about this flick? And how could I have looked him in the face knowing that I had seen it.
/Film Rating: 5 out of 10
September 10th, 2007 at 3:58 am
I wish you had gone to the interview. Cronenberg is used to criticism. It would have been an interesting interview had you raised your dislikes and he countered them.
September 10th, 2007 at 8:24 am
I agree with Jim…you should have done the interview….Cronenberg is probably one of the few people that would be interested in a real conversation about his work…rather than the typical ass-kissing that most ‘interviews’ become…
September 10th, 2007 at 11:39 am
Echoing what the two previous posters said above, I can’t believe you canceled the interview because you “had nothing to ask”. That’s discouraging to me as a longtime reader of the site. You guys are in a position that many of us other film aficionados would love to be in, and to turn down an interview with Cronenberg because you had nothing to ask seems odd, and even disrespectful considering there are probably a bunch of your readers who would have loved to at least hear anything Cronenberg would have said. Peter, I respect you as a writer and frequently enjoy what you post and tend to mostly agree with your opinions, but I am sort of sad that it seems like you’ve begun to take your readership for granted.
I’m sure with a filmmaker of lesser status it wouldn’t be an issue, but with Cronenberg it just seems sort of odd that you wouldn’t at least try to come up with something to ask based off 88 minutes of material the film provided.
I understand if you didn’t like the film, but like Jim said, Cronenberg appreciates criticism of his work and I think you really wasted a good opportunity to ask some questions that perhaps might have answered why the film didn’t impact you the way it has many others.
- d
September 10th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
Okay, for the record, I told my local publicists that I would let them know if I wanted to do the interview after I had seen the film, and I told them that I was not interested. So It’s not like I had a scheduled time.
Don’t get me wrong. I would love to talk to David and Viggo, but I really didn’t have any interest in this film. And the interviews are set up through the studio, and they expect 80-90% of the interview to be about the film. I would have loved to sit down with Chronenberg and talked about his career, his future, but thats not possible in this type of situation.
And believe me, I don’t take you guys for granted. I work my ass off for you guys. But you must also understand that this is a blog, and not a news site that covers everything. I’ve always gone with the theory that I will only talk about the news, movies and people that interest me personally, and that people with the same sensabilities might be interested. It’s worked out so far.
September 10th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
“Oh, and I canceled my interview with Cronenberg. I mean, what could I really ask him about this flick? And how could I have looked him in the face knowing that I had seen it.”
What does the last part of that sentence even mean? I don’t understand why you would write that, it sounds so snide.
September 10th, 2007 at 9:07 pm
I’m not going to scold you or anything, but Cronenberg has such an illustrious history within film — the guy’s practically an icon with anyone familiar with film. What precisely was it about this one bad experience that deterred you so strongly?
September 10th, 2007 at 11:52 pm
Andy, Again - the interview was set up throught the movie studio for the sole purpose of discussing this movie and nothing else. As I said in my review, I am a fan of David’s other works, and as I said in the comment above, I would have loved to have met him and talked about film, his past and future works, but that was not possible in this situation (studio interview). And I really, really REALLY didn’t want to talk about Eastern Promises.
September 12th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
Ah, okay, I think I missed the studio interview piece of the puzzle… I find what you did more honorable than biting the bullet and just humoring Cronenberg when talking about the movie, then.
I’ve just been really excited for this movie, so, to read first your bad review and then your declination to interview David was a big “What!?” for me.
September 12th, 2007 at 4:35 pm
Andy,
You will probably like it. As I said in the review, the group of critic friends that I saw the screening with liked it a lot. I was the only one out of the group who just “didn’t get it”