Mubi Monday: Essential Killing (2010)

Although a fairly slim plot (an Afghan POW escapes, and attempts to stay alive, at all costs, after being shown killing some U.S. soldiers), Essential Killing is a very interesting experience. Showing the central character in a fairly non-judgemental way, no matter how bad things get, it makes you consider whether or not the title is earned.

Vincent Gallo is Mohammed, the main character. Whether he's being tortured by his military captors, eating ants, almost freezing to death, his committed performance makes the choice of casting him more understandable (despite him very much not being from anywhere near the Middle East). The construction of the film is very much as you'd expect. You get the act of violence that leads to his capture, a few scenes of torture, the escape, the survival mode section, and a seemingly-inevitable ending.

Directed by Jerzy Skolimowski, who co-wrote the movie with Ewa Piaskowska, Essential Killing feels like a movie made by people who want to make a very specific point, yet don't really have enough depth and content to turn it into a full movie. Despite the slim runtime, it clocks in at about 83 minutes, this still feels a bit overlong. It needs something more, something to make the viewing experience more worthwhile, and the ending doesn't do enough to make up for the disappointment of the plodding third act.

Skolimowski has a filmography that I'm still keen to explore (and I recommend that everyone checks out the sublime Deep End from 1970), but I am sadly unfamiliar with most of his work. Essential Killing may not be an essential viewing choice, but it's one to admire. A lot of the choices made, in terms of the main character and the plotting, are interesting, at the very least, and the passive overview is not one that you'd find in many (any?) other films on this subject.

Gallo, as already mentioned, it committed to his cause. He's a strange acting presence, and always has been, but he's someone always worth giving some time to (except when he's in The Brown Bunny, which I recall being pretty dire). There's not one moment here in which he doesn't feel as if he IS this character, making one or two moments more disturbing because they seem so real. Very few others have main roles, although Emmanuelle Seigner pops up towards the end of the film, and is almost a relief from the time we've spent so closely attached to Gallo.

I won't rush to watch this again, and I wouldn't recommend it to many others, but I am glad I sat down once with this. It's certainly a film that feels like it should provide a springboard for a lot more thought and conversation, despite not actually managing to do so.

6/10

https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews

Eastern Promises (2007)

David Cronenberg followed up the magnificent A History Of Violence by reteaming with leading man Viggo Mortensen and creating something that works as both a companion piece and also a flipside to their preceding movie. A here and now of violence, if you will.

Events are set in motion by a young girl who gives birth to a child, but dies in the process. Naomi Watts plays a nurse named Anna, present at the birth and worried about the future of the newborn child. She takes a diary that belonged to the deceased girl, finds out that it's in Russian and sets out to get it translated, in an effort to find a family for the baby. Unfortunately, in her attempt to do a good deed she finds herself mixing with some bad people. Bad Russian gangster types. The big boss is Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl), messy situations are created by his son, Kirill (Vincent Cassel), and everything gets cleaned up by Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen), who constantly refers to him as just a driver. As Anna gets more involved with these people she puts herself, and others, in a very dangerous situation.

Unhurried, unfussy and completely unglamorous, Eastern Promises is a typically cool look at some unpleasantness by Cronenberg, working from a fantastic script by Steven Knight. Set in London, he matches his usual style with the great cinematography by Peter Suschitzky with outstanding results. London isn't the collection of buildings scattered around Big Ben and Notting Hill that it so often is in other movies. It's simply a big city, a place full of areas and buildings that you could pass by every day without a suspicion of what has gone on there.

But it's the acting that really lifts this up to a fantastic viewing experience. Naomi Watts is very good in her role, believably strong in her eagerness to do the right thing while also visibly unnerved. Armin Mueller-Stahl is great as the typical, cold gangster boss and Vincent Cassel is always entertaining as Kirill, the son who can never seem to do any right for doing wrong. The film belongs to Viggo Mortensen, however, and his performance is almost perfect. Okay, there may be problems with the accent to those who have a better ear than I do, but it's not too bad. Not too bad at all. His dialogue is also backed up by a physical performance arguably better than the one he delivered in A History Of Violence. Able support also comes from Sinead Cusack, Jerzy Skolimowski and even Tamer Hassan, in a small role that still allows him to feature in the most memorable sequence in the entire film.

Although the movie has quite a few moments of violence in it, none of them are flippant, "easy" movie deaths. This is a film about every bloodletting sending a message, about every body telling a story (be it through tattoos or fatal wounds) and about how much some people will risk in order to make a difference for the better. It's all that, PLUS it's a fantastic gangster movie AND it has one of the best and boldest fight scenes set in a bathhouse since . . . . . . . . . . . well, since ever.

9/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Eastern-Promises-Blu-ray/dp/B0010VXMQW/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1370799643&sr=8-2&keywords=eastern+promises