Chiasmus cult cinema trailers - "Eastern Promises" (2007). *These will be ongoing posts, courtesy of the A.Glass DVD collection. As I offer via Chiasmus Cult trailers, my summarized overviews*

Next time you see, which may be very rare, someone bearing a tattoo of a Russian orthodox church on their chest or back, you can say, "I wonder if that person did jail time in a Russian gulag?".  The horror maestro, and purveyor of the unorthodox marcbe, Canadian director David Cronenberg, often referred to as the instigator of the body horror genre of filmmaking.  Who was born out of the risque period of the 1970s and 1980s movie making, when cinema was far more open and experimental, returns with his 2nd attempt at capturing the audience's fascination of the criminal underworld, "Eastern Promises" (2007).  Which is a follow up, although with an unrelated backstory, to the 2005 release "A History of Violence" starring the very adept American actor Viggo Mortensen, who played the unassuming former hitman of an Irish/American crime family, trying to go straight.  Mortensen returns once again in Eastern Promises, as the heavily tattooed 'criminal' driver Nikolai Luzhin for a Russian crime family, based in London. 

Cronenberg ramps up the violence a notch for "Eastern Promises", portraying the brutality and ruthless of the Russian crime families, apparently residing in Western cities throughout Europe.  From sex trafficking vulnerable Russian women to heroin distribution, it is not far from the truth.  However, there are large doses of Hollywood style 'Mafiosi' romanticism, which offers a comic book style feel, particularly the symbolism of the tattoos, that had more to do with Russian convicts as codes to identify who served time, and where, and what they served time for, to which most were thieves (so watch out for those cat tattoos with the Russian word "NVOVDO" written beneath).  But, it is Australian actress Naomi Watts, who plays a midwife, turned surrogate 'mother', Anna "Anya" Ivanovna Khitrova, that is innocently caught up in horrors of the Russian criminal underworld, after receiving a diary of a pregnant Russian prostitute, who dies, yet her baby survives, upon arriving at the emergency department of a London hospital.

The "Eastern Promises" twist at the end, very much aligns with Cronenberg's own fascination with treading that fine line between what is considered socially acceptable and unacceptable, what can be reformed and what cannot.  Be vary of that tattooed metaphor of the Mark of Cain, which may have indeed sealed your fate.   

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(A.Glass 2025)