Eastern Promises, November 3, 2007

Whatever I said about David Cronenberg after I saw Spider, forget it. At least, forget it if he keeps coming out like the shit that was Eastern Promises. Bad bad bad bad bad. Russian underworld? That could definitely make a good movie. Especially starring Aragorn. We like Aragorn. And London is good. Aragorn + London + Russian underworld. Sounds like a good plan. What could possibly go wrong?

Oh, where to start, where to start.

We could begin with a pretentious voiceover reading of a diary written by a 14-year-old who came to the land of opportunity (or England. No accounting for taste.) with the promise of being a lounge singer and instead got sold into prostitution. And she got raped! And beaten! And injected with heroin so she couldn’t leave! And then she was pregnant! Did we mention she was a virgin when she got raped! And the baby’s father was the head of the Russian Mob! It might sound like I’m just being facetious here, but seriously, international sex slavery stories are pretty well known to the type of audience who would be going to see this movie, and there’s absolutely no need to preach to the choir, especially in such a dogmatic, overdramatic way.

Then there’s the Naomi Watts character. Naomi Watts annoys the hell out of me, because she plays these women who are supposed to be strong and independent individuals (e.g. 21 Grams.) But, she’s Naomi Watts. She’s about 90 pounds and blond. She crinkles up her nose and looks like an angry Miss Piggy and in this movie, she comes with a Russian motorbike and black leather. How badass is that. Strong, independent woman version 2.0, now with helmet. She’s running around with the baby that the 14-year-old died delivering, trying to find out what the 14-year-old’s diary says (if only she listened to the voiceovers, then she would know!) And, really, there’s no reason she would do that except for the movie says so. No midwife would take it upon herself to figure all that shit out; at the end of the day it would suck that the girl died during delivery but shit happens when you deliver babies for a living.

Perhaps most unforgivable about Naomi Watts is that she has no chemistry whatsoever with Viggo Mortensen’s character, whose name I can’t remember. It doesn’t matter. He’s just Aragorn, now and forever. To not have chemistry with Aragorn is an unpardonable sin for any woman with a healthy libido. Especially considering the fact that everyone in the cinema who sits through this movie has the pleasure of seeing Aragorn in a naked knife fight with 2 evil Chechens hired to kill him, who are covered in black leather. Aragorn is covered with tattoos. It is one of the most ridiculous fight scenes I have ever seen, what with 5 minutes of full frontal Aragorn that gets bloodier and bloodier. But, the important part is that we all know what it is that she should be having chemistry with, and the fact that she doesn’t means she is not a real woman.

On the plus side, my Russian informant tells me that the most realistic character was the scion to the Russian Mob. Or, as she called him, “Standard issue Russian douchetool.”