Sometime after The Departed came out, I found myself wondering why we don't see more films about non-Italian organized crime, especially the Russian mob which seems to be the up and coming thing. Then I saw a preview for Eastern Promises, a film about Russian gangsters (and to some extent their Chechen rivals) in London, and I thought it looked terrible. But Chris Orr said it was good and I went to see it and . . . it's good! It contains a lot of what people liked about David Cronenberg's A History of Violence, but I thought it added a deeper sense of place and rootedness reminiscent of screenwriter Steven Knight's fantastic Dirty Pretty Things from a few years back.
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Eastern Promises
18 Sep 2007 03:37 pm
Comments (39)
History of Violence -- comically bad
Dirty Pretty Things -- fantastic
Dead Ringers. Definitive Cronenberg. Possibly the most overlooked screen performance ever, turned in by Jeremy Irons, playing twins of decidedly different personality. Genevieve Bujold her typically ravishing self. I haven't attended a gangster film yet they had me averting my eyes from the screen like this gem did.
I trust you've seen the director's cut of "Once upon a Time in America". If not, it is an extremely long film about the Jewish mob, and worth seeing.
As far as The Departed goes, I thought by far the most interesting part was the "No tickee, no laundry scene!" where Nicholson's gang sells electronics (sort of) to the Chinese gang that is a front for the Chinese government. There were no Mao suits or Kung Fu fightin' to be seen.
The Chinese leader was a crazy young guy with a mohawk waving around a machine gun, which seemed a much more apt description of modern China as I understand it. Its relentless globalization goes with a strong nationalism. And the globalization of China is a much darker story than the computer whiz-kids with soothing accents that are the examples next door in India. Unsafe products, fraudulent marketing, unjust labor standards. Do you like your contemporary cpitalist sausage but you don't like to see it made? Then stay out of China. And then "one if by land, two if by sea" they all get on the boat and speed away from the warehouse. (I of couse have never been to China, so I don't know. It is a country with a great history and natural beauty that over a billion people call home.)
Does this one take the prize for "Worst Mob Movie Title Ever"? When the name of your gangster picture could easily double as the title of an old Merchant/Ivory flick, you need to send the roomfull of marketing monkey back to their typewriters.
Mike
Don't forget "Little Odessa"
http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=990CE5D6143EF93AA25756C0A963958260
"Then I saw a preview for Eastern Promises, a film about Russian gangsters (and to some extent their Chechen rivals) in London, and I thought it looked terrible."
You're a moron. Why would you think a Cronenberg film looked terrible before you'd seen it?
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I'm really amped for Eastern Promises, but I haven't seen it yet. It's still exclusively in Midtown, so I'll wait until it migrates South. Why go above 23rd Street if you can avoid it?
And don't forget that we're less than two months away from No Country for Old Men...
I thought "History of Violence" was interesting as a metaphor, but not as a movie.
The metaphor of the movie (if not the graphic novel) is about how men, even the most domesticated, can be pulled back to savagery, and the difficulty they have returning to civilization afterwards.
Viggo's character was a brutal villain in the past, and this past lets him be a hero for a while in his town where he's just a regular guy. But his act of savage heroism brings the rest of his past to town, threatening his family, and he has to revert to his old self.
And then he has to return to a family that now knows what he really is.
"a deeper sense of place and rootedness reminiscent of screenwriter Steven Knight's fantastic Dirty Pretty Things from a few years back."
DPT may have indeed been a nice screenplay with a fantastic sense of place and rootedness, but as a movie, it played a bit stiffly and didactically.
Not the worst 90 minutes you'll spend, but somewhat limited.
And since we're talking about DPT and thus Steven Frears, may I mention that the Gordon Brown joke in The Queen was really funny.
And let's not forget about Sexy Beast...
Also, what's with all the knocking on History of Violence? That's a pretty awesome movie.
Freaking cosmoplitan anglophile. HoV had a fine sense of place and rootedness, just not any place MY has a clue about.
More knocking: I hated History of Violence, which was too bad, since I really like the actors who starred in it. I think Cronenberg should stick to horror movies -- History of Violence has a plot that is entirely too predictable and the violence seems cartoonish. I'd like to think Eastern Promises will be better, but . . . I doubt it.
"Unsafe products, fraudulent marketing, unjust labor standards..."
It's almost enough to make you turn to Communism!
"Also, what's with all the knocking on History of Violence? That's a pretty awesome movie."
I utterly agree with you, but like Crash, it wasn't a crowd pleaser.
I get the vibe that Eastern Promises will have more appeal to the nescient folks than HoV.
I rented The Departed the other week since all of my favorite bloggers raved about it, and I thought it sucked. Even Gangs of New York was better, and that was a seriously flawed movie. Though now I really want to see the Hong Kong original. A Hong Kong action movie with that plot would have to be awesome, since HK action movies can be ridiculous without undermining suspension-of-disbelief in a way that serious American movies can't.
HoV was one of those movies ("Wolf" being the canonical example) that go completely off the rails about 2/3rds through having done a magnificent job with the setup and then completely switching genres and in a jarring way. Add bad dubbing to the last 25 minutes of HoV, and you have early Jackie Chan.
Eastern Promises, however, looks spectacular.
Also, much love for the Leone cut of "Once Upon a Time in America" upthread.
Eastern Promises a lot of penis. Four minutes of full frontal Viggo. Supposedly, it's the longest in history.
"Supposedly, it's the longest in history."
Viggo has the longest penis in history?
Big as a hobbit's arm. He's a very gifted actor.
but like Crash, it wasn't a crowd pleaser
Yeah, but in Crash, you at least had the horrified feeling of not being sure WHAT would happen next ... kind of like in the basement scene in Pulp Fiction, but longer.
The best part of Crash for me however was the NYC taxi ride home 40 blocks, which after THAT movie was a truly horrifying experience.
Btw, did I mention getting to work as Viggo's stand-in during the nude scenes?
Viggo ... now THERE'S a name for a Viagra spokesmensch.
Videodrome and Naked Lunch are far and away the best Cronenberg films.
This new turn he's taken, from roughly Spider onward, has been intriguing but not wholly satisfying.
I enjoyed Eastern Promises, but it felt really incomplete -- it needed about 15-20 minutes of padding out (and not just at the end). Actually, what it felt like more than anything was an HBO pilot (not that that's a bad thing).
Law & Order, back in the old days when it was a good show, had a lot of Russian Mob episodes that gave the viewer a very good sense of how incredibly scary those guys are.
I thought "Eastern Promises" was a lot better than "History of Violence."
"Eastern Promises" raises politically incorrect questions about why we would want so many newcomers that more immigrant mafias have become inevitable. Cronenberg explained to the New York Times his opposition to immigrants failing to assimilate:
"At its worst, [multiculturalism's] you come and you live there, but you live in a little ghetto of your own culture that you brought with you. I suppose that’s happening in the States with the Spanish language. Can multiculturalism really work?"
"Eastern Promises" asks whether the West needs, in particular, quite so many foreign pimps to lure blonde adolescents here from Eastern Europe with promises of singing jobs, only to rape them, hook them on heroin, and enslave them in brothels.
HoV was one of those movies ("Wolf" being the canonical example) that go completely off the rails about 2/3rds through having done a magnificent job with the setup and then completely switching genres and in a jarring way.
Yes, exactly. Eastern Promises is much better on this score.
For anyone looking, the HK flick that lends _The Departed_ most of its great plot is available on Netflix as _Infernal Affairs_. There is also a prequel and sequel. They are not as action-oriented as one might think, and overall _The Departed_ is more violent. However, for a great violent Asian movie, rent _Oldboy_ and its sorta-sequels _Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance_ and _Lady Vengeance_, the so-called _Revenge_ trilogy.
Although I generally like Cronenberg I disliked A History of Violence. HoV was incredibly schematic, filled with cliches, and it obnoxiously telegraphed all its moments of Thematic Significance. The flat stereotypicality of the family throughout the movie made the last scene unconvincing, and the cartoonish villainy of the mobsters gives the film the moral depth of Death Wish.
"Unforgiven" and "Blue Velvet" are both more authentic explorations of the themes HoV purported to address.
In "History of Violence," exactly which Philadelphia crime family did Viggo Mortensen and William Hurt belong to anyway? The terrifying Anglo-Nordic Main Line Mob that's headquartered at the Merion Golf and Cricket Club?
"In "History of Violence," exactly which Philadelphia crime family did Viggo Mortensen and William Hurt belong to anyway? The terrifying Anglo-Nordic Main Line Mob that's headquartered at the Merion Golf and Cricket Club?"
I've watched video of some of David Letterman's innovative Ernie Kovacs inspired comedy in the early days of his 12:30am show on NBC back in the 80's.
One of his great bits was "Limited Perspective Movie Reviews" where they would do such things as having a dentist come on to review an the actors' teeth in a movie.
I suggest Steve Sailer start doing such reviews on a regular basis to cover how different movies are defaming the proud white race and helping to keep the white man down.
Hey, the Russian Mob is about to checkmate the video game scene with GTA IV.
I would like to see more hick/redneck meth-addicted biker gangs in middle America movies.
"Though now I really want to see the Hong Kong original. A Hong Kong action movie with that plot would have to be awesome, since HK action movies can be ridiculous without undermining suspension-of-disbelief in a way that serious American movies can't"
Infernal Affairs isn't really an action movie. It's a crime thriller with some action elements, but it's nothing like a John Woo or Jackie Chan film. The focus is on the psychology of the two moles trying to uncover each other without being found out and at least in Tony Leung's case not being irredeemably corrupted by the experience. You should also check out Infernal Affairs 2, which is chronologically a prequel and draws heavily on the Godfather flicks.
"However, for a great violent Asian movie, rent _Oldboy_ and its sorta-sequels _Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance_ and _Lady Vengeance_, the so-called _Revenge_ trilogy."
Sympathy For Mr Vengeance came out first. It's very good, but it is unremittingly bleak and for my tastes a bit too nihilistic. Oldboy is the most accessible of the three (if you're into Asian extreme), and it has more of Park's trademark twisted humour and some excellent cinematography. It's certainly the most entertaining of the films (and has a jawdropping twist, which is made all the better by the fact that you see it coming). The others are less entertaining but still interesting mediations on the futility and chaotic destructiveness of vengeance.
As to Matt's question, there are loads of non-Italian gangster films. Maybe you just haven't watched them. In Britain you have the classics Get Carter and The Long Good Friday among others, and then the recent flood of less high quality gangster films kicked off by Lock Stock And Two Smoking Barrels. It's hard to find a British film which isn't about organised crime these days. There are dozens of Hong Kong films about the Triads (beyond the ones mentioned above, check out Ringo Lam's City On Fire, the inspiration for Reservoir Dogs) and dozens of Japanese films about Yakuza (see most of the outstanding Takeshi Kitano's output, for example). There are fewer films about Russian gangsters, because the film industry is so much smaller since the fall of the Soviet Union. In recent years, though, there's Bumer and Zhmurki.
"Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels" is an updated mix of Damon Runyon and P. G. Wodehouse. It's emphasis is on wit, slang, and convoluted plotting, and the crimes are excuses for the w, s, and cp.
"In Britain you have the classics Get Carter and The Long Good Friday among others, and then the recent flood of less high quality gangster films kicked off by Lock Stock And Two Smoking Barrels. "
"The Krays" would be the better example. It's based on the real-life Kray brothers (who, BTW provided the inspiration for the Pirhanna brothers, Doug and Dinsdale.)
Sure. I was just pointing out that these films do exist.
"if you're into Asian extreme"
Dedicated to it. Sympathy for Mr Vengeance and A Tale of Two Sisters and many more were revelations, returning an excitement for movies I'd thought lost forever.
Saving the Green Planet was a little strange.
Some random thoughts:
I remember sitting through A History of Violence and laughing hysterically (along with a good portion of the theater) at some of the ridiculous sex scenes and comic violence, wondering the whole time whether the comedy was intentional or not.
Although Matt did mention him, he didn't make it clear that Dirty Pretty Things lead writer Steven Knight also wrote the screenplay for Eastern Promises.
Eastern Promises is not about "non-Italian organized crime, especially the Russian mob," it is about vory v zakone, a very specific subculture of career criminals formed during tzarist times, calcified in opposition to Soviet authority in the horror that was the Soviet prison system, and who have thrived since the USSR's collapse, for a number of complex reasons.
The Russian mob itself is not an "up and coming thing." It has been around for a long time and has even been all over the Western news for well over a decade. Vory v zakone represents only one element of a professional structure that involves a surprisingly large amount of PhD's and former spies and special forces operatives.
Lastly, Chechen criminals are not necessarily rivals to the other Eastern European gangs. Even though some Chenens may funnel money to fighters (or at least used to), Russian mafiya relationships are, in many cases, based solely on money, especially with the vory v zakone, whose personal honor code is an attempt to stay "above" politics in all its forms.
P.S. The movie was okay, and would have benefitted greatly from an extra half hour or so.
I enjoyed Infernal Affairs a lot more than The Departed. However, the sequel (IA 2) that's actually a prequel and the third one that's all over the map in terms of time are less enjoyable and confusing. They need to incorporate measures, such as hair coloring and obesity, so I can tell all the actors apart.
Comments closed October 02, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
What *did* people like about Cronenberg's A History of Violence? If I hated it, will I like the new one?
(N.b. that I'm not against violence in general, being willing to defend the Kill Bill movies aesthetically.)
Posted by Anderson | September 18, 2007 3:46 PM