Jamie passion and passionfruit!

This film has its super fans and its detractors but for my money it is the best I have seen so far in the pre-Oscar race.  The ever-fascinating Cronenberg dispenses with some of the fantasy but not all the gore to present us with one of his most solid works featuring some superb performances by the male actors.  Set in London and in the milieu of the Russian mafia, this is the story of Nikolai, a chauffeur and assassin who has various tests to perform during the film in order to satisfy his superiors.  Nikolai’s willingness to do this and his psychological attitude is what we get to observe here and Cronenberg gives us a plot in which all is not quite what it seems.  Most of all, the mood he creates and the way he films the set pieces like the fight in the sauna and the Christmas singing in the restaurant show his immense skill as a celluloid storyteller.  Viggo Mortensen gives a towering performance as Nikolai and seems born to this daring role complete with accent and the whole mafia act.  Armin Mueller-Stahl as the genial and creepy mafia granddad also plays the part of his life and I liked the drunken excesses of Kiril, played by Vincent Cassel as Semyon’s son.  Another complete character.  The women have less to do although Naomi Watts is sound in the central role of Anna, the naïve nurse who gets into a world beyond her worst dreams.  Howard Shore’s music, the intelligent script and good photography make this a wholly satisfying film, even if we do not get the same innovation we might expect from Cronenberg or a masterpiece in itself.  Just a very good movie worth seeing for Mortensen alone.

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