CS Weekly Archive > Weekend Read > 09/14/07

Broken Promises

By danny munso

Writer Steven Knight manages to craft brilliant characters out of this tale of a midwife's reluctant ties to an infamous London mob, but the story ultimately isn't interesting enough to serve them well.

Eastern Promises

Steven Knight

Anna (Naomi Watts), a London midwife, delivers the child of a Russian prostitute who dies during childbirth. Before handing the orphan over, Anna attempts to find the unidentified woman's family through the only item the dead girl possessed: her diary. Anna quickly links the mother to a notorious Russian crime family, and though she attempts to drop the issue, the diary proves to be valuable evidence against the family. Now, Anna's in a battle for her life and finds an unlikely ally in the family's bodyguard, Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen), who may not be who he seems.

Last time we heard from writer Steven Knight, he had teamed with director Stephen Frears (The Queen) to bring us the titillating, thrilling, and fascinating Dirty Pretty Things, which ultimately earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Though Knight is again teamed with an acclaimed director—A History of Violence's David Cronenberg—it is sad to report that Eastern Promises fails to recapture the magic and spark of Things' screenplay. Based on the influx of Eastern European immigrants to the United Kingdom, we are shown a side of London that is rarely captured on film, one that involves mob families and espionage, and while those topics may sound interesting, they are not put to good use here.

One thing Promises has going for it are its characters, which Knight lovingly crafted after some real-life mobsters he met in research. Knight's talent as a writer may not come across in Promises awkward plotting, but he creates three separate and fully dimensional characters, each of which could have carried another film. For Anna, he surrounds her with a dysfunctional family, including a just-deceased father, an overbearing mother, and a rough uncle, all of whom combine to bring the real understanding to Anna's desire to find this child a good home. Nikolai, though mysterious, is just as fascinating due to the lengths to which he will go to be accepted and the empathy he shows those who don't deserve it. But, the best of all may be Kirill (Vincent Cassel), the son of the mob boss, who lives for excess and revels in his social status (think Sonny Corleone on uppers). His character is a heartbreaking and misunderstood one, and brings a level of pathos to the film that, though unnecessary to the plot, is hard to imagine the movie without.

It's a shame the story doesn't do more to showcase these rich characters. While the basic plot is interesting, it ultimately ends up wearing a little thin. Anna's journey to discover the orphan's father should have been a fascinating mystery. Instead, this resolution comes way too early, and the film instead chooses to explore personal relationships that were probably best left as sidebars, rather than the driving forces of the plot. Individually, these relationships are interesting, particularly those between Nikolai and Anna and Nikolai and Kirill. Ultimately, they hold very few surprises and, in turn, the story falls flat. Perhaps this was noticed, because there is a twist to the story, but it is one that is both predictable and unimaginative. There is a great story hiding somewhere in Eastern Promises, it's just not the one that shows up on screen.

Despite the pedigree it has going for it, Eastern Promises fails to deliver a story interesting enough to hold the audience's attention and instead becomes a film that promises to disappoint.

Eastern Promises
Focus Features
Rated R; 100 min.

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Danny Munso graduated from film school in 2004 and can currently be found on his computer working on one of his many half-written screenplays. Or, more likely, he's on the Internet checking the scores of his beloved Bay Area sports teams.

Eastern Promises courtesy Focus Features

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