A mysterious crime family with smoldering secrets plays with sharp objects off the filthy backwaters of the Thames. Cronenberg and Mortensen are at it again, with relish!
Director David Cronenberg continues his movement away from fantasy and physical deformity and towards monsters in human form. Following up his recent award-winning forays into the intricacies of urban human interaction, “Crash” and “A History of Violence,” his latest film penetrates the deep recesses of the criminal underworld.
The subject at hand is the Vory V Zakone criminal brotherhood, in this case headed by the superficially smooth, but vicious to the bone, Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl). Semyon’s cover is the sophisticated and upscale “Trans-Siberian Restaurant” in London, where he coaches some children on the violin while selling others into sex slavery. Semyon’s volatile son and enforcer, Kirill (Vincent Cassel), struggles with his father’s wishes to uphold the family’s place in the Vory but has his own demons to fight as well. Viggo Mortensen plays rootless chauffeur Nikolai Luzhin who at first does nothing but drive the car, but eventually develops into a force to be reckoned with when touched by London midwife Anna Khitrova (Naomi Watts).
The reteaming of Cronenberg and Mortensen from the hit “History of Violence” is a slam dunk, especially on the home court of “Dirty Pretty Things” screenwriter Steven Knight. The violence in the film is extremely graphic and all the more disturbing for its realism. At what point does this cross over to the gratuitous? Are the slashed throats and the knife in the eye really needed to tell the story? But there are great undercurrents frothing behind the slasher mayhem. The Vory V Zakone criminal brotherhood; a mafia-like criminal structure of loose-knit cooperation amongst eastern European hoodlums. Like American organized crime, the Vory grew fat when the USSR wanted things the government could not, or would not, provide. In the Stalin era the gang grew by developing smuggling and bootlegging on a large scale and they paid dearly in the prisons of the Gulag where they took tattoos telling the story of their criminal lives.
As people were allowed to leave the former USSR, the Vory expanded into hard drugs, and the sex trade in which women and girls are forced to work as prostitutes in London. Frequently the woman are forced to become hooked on heroine to further seal off outside interference and escape The particularly vile nature of the crime, in combination with the secrecy and physical violence of the Vory provides the perfect story for the dark and dank London backdrop. Wet streets, graveyards and the scummy backwaters of the Thames provide the perfect setting for the ultimate ugliness of child abuse. DP Peter Suschitzky is on it like mold on brickwork---better film noir than film noir.
As in “History of Violence” Mortensen’s character Nikolai is an unwilling hero. Like Humphrey Bogart’s Rick Blaine in “Casablanca” he does his job and minds his business. But when a 14 year old heroine addict dies a bloody death giving birth in the care of Anna, she and Nikolai are thrown together in a mission to save the child from her mother’s fate. Semyon carries the burden of the ruthless gangster kingpin made even harder by his cowardly son Kirill---dreadful secrets emerge as Kirill’s homosexuality rears out of past travesties. As a young boy, was he abused by his father? “Pederast” he spits as he has a fellow Vory dispatched with a razor to the throat in the opening scenes. Is he killing a competitor, or a symbol of his father Semyon?
The combination of the creative prowess of screenwriter Knight and the reunited Mortensen/Cronenberg team provides a rich return on Knight’s previous research into the dark underbelly of London. There appear to be ample secrets to delve into in the melting pot of legal/illegal immigration there. Cronenberg also reunites with lenser Peter Suschitzky, apparently a man well endowed to photograph the dark side of life. Oscar winning composer Howard Shore is picked to expand on his “Departed” gloominess to provide the perfect sound track for evil goings-on in the London underworld. Authentic tattoos from the prison underground of the Soviet Gulag round out the story of unspeakable evil, as crime families self-destruct from the weight of past sins.
A great crime thriller with worthwhile twists at the end; but the violence is graphic and bloody, more real than in the director’s outright horror films. Be prepared for what, at times, seems like explicit blood and gore that the film could have done without.
Release: September 14, 2007
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