David Cronenberg
La Promessa dell'Assassino

Thriller but also drama, "La promessa dell'assassino" (Eastern Promises) is, as always in director Cronenberg's films, a complex and layered story, a fertile ground rich with prompts that we can choose to activate or not.

This unusual mafia film is actually a refined investigation on the theme of identity, exemplified by the theme of the body and its transformations, a concept always central in the Canadian director's work since the beginning ("Rabid" and "The Fly"). Key scenes confirm it, such as the removal of teeth and fingers from a corpse to prevent identification, or even better, the use of the body as a biographical document, readable through tattoos that allow the reconstruction of a personal history: splendid for this purpose is the initiation scene. Identity, however, not only on a tangible level but also psychological, that is, the millennial "what we would like to be versus what we actually are". And here then is the son of a boss (a Vincent Cassel finally noteworthy for professional skills and not just for his beautiful and native wife), a slave to his father and frustrated in the attempt to be worthy of him, burying his homosexual urges towards his right-hand man (Viggo Mortensen, who reconfirms himself as an excellent actor and not just the handsome guy) who is in turn engaged in pretending to be what he is not (but we won't spoil the twist for you).

The driving force of the plot is a midwife's search for the family of a baby who would otherwise be put up for adoption. A complex character, a would-be mother who sees in the newborn the chance to reaffirm her maternal ambitions frustrated by a previous miscarriage, is portrayed in a straightforward and no-frills manner by the talented Naomi Watts. In the background, the identity of a people, the Russians, passionate and bloodthirsty, and their underworld, proud of traditions and rules, ancient norms that, even in love choices, should never be violated.

The ideal follow-up to the previous "A History Of Violence", where the excellent Mortensen also played a peaceful character hiding a very different nature, the film is enjoyable and features a filmic grammar of great class (the long sequence in the Turkish bath is splendid) and always confirms the brilliant David Cronenberg at high levels.