Close behind him in impact is Naomi Watts, playing Anna, a midwife who is also central to the story. Watts has a very expressive face and eyes, and Cronenberg makes the most of her reaction shots.
Eastern Promises opens with two compelling events. A 14-year old girl collapses in a London pharmacy, bleeding profusely. She dies in childbirth and Watts’ Anna takes on the care of the girl’s baby, a daughter. At much the same time, a man has his throat slit while sitting in a barber’s chair. The link between those events turns out to be the activities of the Russian mafia in London. The dead girl was involved in a human trafficking scheme; the dead man was a mob guy who ran afoul of the boss’ son.
That son is where Nikolai comes in. Nikolai is the chauffeur/enforcer/lieutenant to the boss’ family. The front for the family is a Russian restaurant, but they have much more going on behind the scenes. Anna unwittingly takes the dead girl’s diary to them for translation when her Russian uncle initially refuses to do the work. Anna is looking for the girl’s family so that the baby will not have to go into foster care. Unfortunately, there’s much in the diary the mob doesn’t want out in public, including the identity of the baby’s father. Anna finds out too late that her would-be helpers are actually a major threat to her, her own family and the baby.
Nikolai’s own situation within the mob is tenuous. The son is a real screw-up, and association with him isn’t necessarily positive. The father promotes Nikolai, only to set him up to be killed in place of the son. That leads to the most violent scene in the film, a fight in a bathhouse between Nikolai and two would-be killers. They’re both fully clothed and armed with knives; he’s naked and unprotected.
Eastern Promises is far from being a love story, but there are several strongly emotional scenes between Nikolai and Anna, all played beautifully by Mortensen and Watts. A beautifully atmospheric score and the somewhat bleak London setting all add to the mood of heartbreak and danger.
Special features include a general making-of featurette, with shorter pieces on Nikolai’s tattoos, Watts’ motorcycle riding, and the bathhouse fight scene. The latter three are all very interesting, especially the piece on the tattoos. Mortensen is known for doing very detailed research on his characters, and in addition to spending time in Russia hanging out with people like Nikolai, he learned that there is an elaborate language of tattoos among Russian criminals. The piece explains the significance of each of Nikolai’s tattoos, and what they would say about him to other criminals.
I love the language options on this film! Besides English, the choices are Russian, Turkish and Ukranian. Much of the film is in Russian (with English subtitles), including a fair amount of Mortensen’s dialogue. The subtitle options are the usual: English, French and Spanish. Sound is Dolby DTS Surround.
