Dir. David Cronenberg , UK/Canada/US, 2007, 101 mins
Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Vincent Cassel
Review by Carol Allen
Steven Knight, who wrote the screenplay for this, was also the writer of Dirty Pretty Things. Like that earlier film, this gives us a window onto a largely unknown world right here in London. In this case it's the world of the East European Mafia. London 's new immigrant communities obviously hold a fascination for Knight, who appears to have done his research thoroughly, putting in fascinating details like the meaning of the tattoos that cover Nikolai's (Mortensen) body, all of which make for a very convincing picture of this London within London .
It's also a very gripping story, extremely well plotted and with interesting characters. Anna (Watts) is a midwife, who gets drawn into this underground society, when a teenage girl dies giving birth. She leaves behind her diary, which is written in Russian, and Anna, who is half Russian herself, decides to use it to trace the baby's family. Her enquiries lead her to a plush Siberian restaurant in the East End, owned by charismatic and charming Semyon (Mueller-Stahl), where she meets Nikolai, one of Semyon's drivers, an enigmatic figure who gives little away about himself but who tries to warn her off, knowing as he does that Semyon is the ruthless head of a notorious crime family.
Mortensen gives a powerful performance, which grows in strength as the film progresses, appearing at first quite self effacing and gradually drawing the audience to him. He is one of those actors who can convey volumes through stillness. He's also very quietly sexy with a feeling of strength behind that stillness. Muller-Stahl is terrific. His kindly grandfather exterior, that you sense from the beginning is hiding something menacing, makes him even scarier as the character is revealed, while his love of his Russian culture and the experience we get of that is very seductive. Cassel is well cast as his unstable, closet homosexual son, most unnerving in a very disturbing scene in the brothel owned by his father, when he forces Nikolai to have sex with one of the girls and you become aware of just how volatile he is. He also rises well to the challenge presented to a Frenchman acting in English with a Russian accent. Plus there's good support from Sinead Cusack as Anna's widowed mother and Jerzy Skolimowski as her Russian uncle, full of outrageous bigotry and fairy tales about having been a member of the KGB.
The film is very violent in places but always for a valid purpose and violence is never over used. The opening scene of an assassination in the cosy world of a barber's shop is so graphic and startling it makes you wince and there is a totally brilliant, prolonged and brutal fight sequence in a Turkish bath, in which Nikolai, all the more vulnerable for being naked, is fighting for his life. And while the attraction between Nikolai and Anna is suggested, it is not a romance and it is wisely kept restrained. This is a well made, engrossing thriller with an unexpected twist in its tail and Cronenberg's use of lesser known London locations gives us an interestingly different perspective on the city.
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