Wiggly Socks Movie Reviews

An unholy family meets at Christmastime

By Linda Winsh-Bolard

It's Christmastime in London when a midwife Anna Khitrova (Naomi Watts) delivers a baby girl from a dying mother. On the body of the fourteen years old Tatiana, who died in delivery, she finds a handwritten diary. Anna fees very sorry for both, the mother and the child, and decides to have the diary translated in an attempt to find Tatian's family. She named the baby Kristina and hopes to return her to her relatives.

Anna's uncle Stepan (Jerzy Skolimowski) is Russian, as was her father, but thinks the diary should not have been taken from a dead body, and refuses to have anything to do with it. Anna then, mostly by default, takes the text copies to the restaurant owner called Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl) to find another translator.

Behind the posh facade of Russian restaurant, and the charming old school demeanor of its owner, dwells ruthless, brutal branch of Russian mafia, called the Vory V Zakonne, a prison brotherhood, headed by Semyon. It deals in everything, and everything includes people, children, little girls like Tatiana who was lured to London to better herself and whom Semyon raped when his son Kirill (Vincent Cassel) failed to do so. Kirill, the family enforcer, worries his father, he is unpredictable and having killed recently, needs all the protection that his driver, and Daddy's employee, Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen) can give.

Anna becomes just another problem to be dealt with; Semyon makes it clear to her. She is to give the diary to Nikolai in exchange for diary the address of tatina's family in Ukraine. But the address is withheld. During the exchange comes out that Stepan read the diary and cautioned Anna and her Mom against dealing with Semyon.

Enigmatic Nikolai also reads the diary before he watches Semyon burn it. He is dully ordered to kill Stepan. As a reward, Semyon offers him membership in Vory. Nikolai has no idea that there is a catch in this honor, a deadly one.

Nor do we, the audience, truly understand what is going on until the last 10 minutes, and that pleased me greatly. It is so rare these days.

Viggo Mortensen is his charming, warm self, and a fast killer, as is excellent Armin Mueller-Stahl. Vincent Cassel is believable psychopathic drunk-killer haunted by his own demons and filial duty. On the feminine side Anna's mother Helen (Sinead Cusack) has more presence than Naomi Watts who get to play the innocent child care giver who found herself in the world of evil beyond her imagination by chance. And that world is sitting on her doorstep.

David Cronenberg's new gangster film is fast, well shot in the accepted gloom of the genre, dark and constrained spaces are contrasted by harsh lighting, classically edited story is based in solid script and acted by names that often already have an Oscar. Cronenberg does not need number of special effects and computer tricks to say what he wants to say, there is plenty of blood, some perhaps a bit gratuitous, but not so much that it would overwhelm the story line. The sense of danger, the dread of those who are falling down, is nicely presented. There is degradation and despair, and the rigid invisible division between this world and London of "ordinary people". Except for Nikolai, other characters are largely linear, but this is relatively short mafia thriller, so it is to be expected. I could live without the last scene, but I presume the producer could not.

On the whole well spend couple of hours.

Director: David Cronenberg, Camera: Peter Suschitzky, Writer: Steve Knight, Production designer: Carol Spier, Music: Howard Shore, Editor: Ronald Sanders.