Film auteur David Cronenberg doesn’t care about offending people, made strikingly clear in the first three minutes of Eastern Promises when a) a guy’s throat is slit in incredibly graphic detail, b) a pregnant girl starts bleeding all over a pharmacy floor, and c) the camera does a close-up of a barely alive baby covered in placenta and blood. It’s cemented when we get another slit throat, multiple shots of Viggo Mortensen’s genitals, and a guy getting stabbed in the eye. What makes all of the violence so shocking isn’t just how graphic it is, but how realistic it’s portrayed – Cronenberg is out to shock you, but not in a cartoony way. A movie like Shoot 'Em Up is more violent, but that's done for camp - this is about realism.Eastern Promises isn’t just about uber-violence, with a solid plot augmented by great performances from Mortensen (as a Russian mobster) and Naomi Watts (as a midwife in far over her head). Cronenberg is a master of letting us know story details through subtle movements – very little is said outright, but it’s up to the viewer to pick up on clues in the backgrounds and infer what they can. He remembers that film is primarily a visual art, and doesn’t bog us down with exposition. Thus, all of his movies are open to interpretation – they mean what you want them to mean.
Much better than: Shoot 'Em Up
Slightly better than: A History of Violence
Worse than: Goodfellas
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