Eastern Promises
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Eastern Promises is a Canadian 2007 drama and thriller feature film directed by David Cronenberg. The screenplay was written by Steve Knight, whose previous credits include Stephen Frears' Dirty Pretty Things. Tropes include "white slavery", uncertain kinship and descent, and violence.
Cast
- Viggo Mortensen as Nikolai Luzhin
- Naomi Watts as Anna Khitrova, Semyon calls her "Anna Ivanovna" (using the patronymic)
- Vincent Cassel as Kirill
- Armin Mueller-Stahl as Semyon
- Sinéad Cusack as Helen
- Donald Sumpter as Yuri
- Jerzy Skolimowski as Stepan
- Igor Outkine, accordionist and singer in the birthday party scene
Plot
Anna Khitrova (Naomi Watts), a midwife at a London hospital, delivers a baby girl from an unconscious and hemorrhaging fourteen-year-old. The teenager dies during childbirth and has no identification other than a diary, written in Russian and a business card for a restaurant called Trans-Siberian. Wanting to find relatives for the new-born girl, Anna sets out to uncover the mother's identity.
Anna visits the restaurant, owned by charismatic Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl), a boss in the Russian Mafia or vor v zakone ("thief in law"), who offers to help by translating the diary. For this purpose Anna brings him a copy, but he insists on getting the original too, subtly threatening to harm the baby.
Anna and her mother Helen (Sinéad Cusack) are visited by her Russian-born uncle Stepan (Jerzy Skolimowski), who urges her to destroy the diary and leave things as they are. Anna continues to search for the truth as Semyon becomes more interested in her and the diary. With Stepan's grudging help she learns that Semyon had raped the girl, who was a prostitute in a "club" owned by him, and she realizes that Semyon is the father of the baby girl.
Outside Trans-Siberian she meets Nikolai Luzhin (Viggo Mortensen), a chauffeur and enforcer in Semyon's criminal enterprises. Nikolai spends most of his time with Semyon's unstable son, Kirill (Vincent Cassel), a violent and abusive drunk. Nikolai is forced to use his tact and diplomacy to keep Kirill out of trouble and to limit the problems Kirill causes through his stupidity and excesses.
Anna gives Nikolai the original diary, hoping to get an address of the baby's relatives in return. However, Nikolai says he knows nothing about that. Semyon burns the diary.
Stepan has helped to translate the diary. Semyon learns of this and decides he knows too much, so he orders Nikolai to kill him. Instead, Nikolai sends him to a hotel in Scotland and lies to Semyon, telling him that he has killed Stepan.
Of Kirill's excesses, the latest is an ill-advised murder, together with barber Azim, in his shop, of a rival Chechen criminal leader. The Chechens seek revenge and threaten to kill Azim if he does not help them killing Kirill. Semyon hatches a plan to save Kirill and Azim. Azim will take Nikolai to a bathhouse (a convenient meeting place for mafia members, because the tattoos are exposed) and pretends to the Chechens that Nikolai is Kirill, and let them kill him. First Semyon has Nikolai promoted to Kirill's rank of Captain, and has him tattooed accordingly. In the bathhouse two dressed Chechens attack a naked Nikolai with knives. He manages to kill them but gets severely wounded by the knives himself.
Hospitalized after the fight, Nikolai is visited by a Scotland Yard detective specialising in the Russian Mafia; it is revealed that Nikolai is an undercover officer of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB - a successor to the infamous KGB) working with the British police. The Russians and Scotland Yard want to pull Nikolai out of the operation. He tells the Brit detective to tell his superiors that now that he has been promoted in the mafia organisation it would be a waste to stop now. Also, he recommends taking a blood sample from Semyon and the baby, to confirm that it is his. Since the mother was underage this would be sufficient for proving statutory rape and having him go to prison.
After being forced to submit to a blood test, Semyon realizes what is happening and assigns Kirill to kidnap and dispose of the baby girl. Kirill succeeds in the kidnapping, but when Anna discovers the baby missing she recruits Nikolai's help to find her.
Nikolai knows where Kirill is most likely to dispose of a body and together with Anna, races to the slipway on the River Thames. They find Kirill, holding the baby by the water, but suffering a crisis of conscience. They convince Kirill not to throw the baby into the river, but to hand the child to Anna. Nikolai hugs Kirill telling him that his father, Semyon, will be going away and they will be in control themselves with nothing to fear.
The story closes with Anna raising the child (now several months older) at her home, and Nikolai sitting alone at the restaurant with the status of being the crime lord but deep in contemplation, leaving the viewer to think who Nikolai really is and why he did what he did.
