Director: David Cronenberg
Rating: 10/10
I don’t remember the last time I watched a solid gangster movie, because most of them nowadays go for predictable plots and similar endings. And it takes a Canadian auteur to bring the genre back to form, only he didn’t use the Sicilians, Cronenberg used the Russians. The movie takes place in London and centers around a nurse played by Naomi Watts (“King Kong”, “Inland Empire”, “Mulholland Dr.”), and a mysterious gangster played by Viggo Mortensen (“The Lord of the Rings Trilogy”, “A History of Violence”).
The movie starts with a young girl giving birth. That young girl who soon died giving birth and her baby came into the care of Watts, who found a journal with a secret. Her path eventually crossed with that of the Russia Mafia and the charismatic but brutal Russian mafia boss (Armin Mueller-Stahl) and his henchman (Mortensen). For unexplained reasons, Watts trusts Mortensen and I am not going to reveal more about the plot. I want you to be surprised for yourself.
The first aspect every person needs to remember about a good gangster movie is never to sugarcoat anything. I applaud Cronenberg’s decision to choose the Russian Mafia in London instead of the Sicilians in New York City because the latter have become a cliché ever since “The Godfather”. There is only pure and raw filmmaking at its best in this movie. I have to admit that I worried about the director’s ability to pull off this movie without mentioning something redundant from other mafia films. I also worried about the authenticity of the Russian accent from Mortensen, which might be as bad as the accent Harrison Ford tried on in “K-19: Widowmaker”, which appeared and disappeared in random. It now seems that I worry too much.
My favorite scene in the movie is of course, the fight scene. I have never seen a more gorgeously choreographed or a more ruthless fight scene ever. This has to rank among the best action sequences in film history. A friend of mine puts it better than I can: “This is not just a regular fight scene from a Bond movie where James Bond kills the other guys without a scratch and then goes to the next room to fuck the girl; this is a realistic fight scene where the guy wins, but gets the shit beaten out of him before he does. It is one of those rare moments that the hyped up scene does not live up to the actual segment in the movie.”
I have to say that there are plot holes, but they are not significant enough to dampen my enthusiasm for this movie. And Cronenberg, who directed the excellent “A History of Violence” is at the top of his form, and he has been improving film by film since his horror film in the late 70’s and early 80’s. This is by far his best movie, and one of the best ones of 2007.
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