What is cool about the pen and paper is that is does not crash on you while you are writing.

ok....begin....

 I love Naomi Watts. It seemed to have come from no where, but there is no other female in Hollywood right now that I am more hypnotized by than her. I am completely enamoured by her appearance on the screen. It began when I went to see King Kong in the theaters. The film itself made me laugh, especially at the end, but she was this raving beauty, where, ever since I am just thrilled to see what she will do next.

So you could imagine my joy when she was going to be in Cronenberg's next film, one of my favorite directors, now with my amourous silver screen affair, Naomi Watts. So I happen to check this movie out last night. I did not have high expectations because the subject matter was not immediately appealing, but I am open to the possibilities.

I am not going to give any spoilers in this write-up, so don't worry about me giving anything away if you have not seen it. But the ending! Just kidding. Seriously, its a simple movie really. Its a story of a young Russian woman who walks into a pharmacy asking for help who then collapses from loss of blood. After being taken to the hospital, the nurse on duty, Anna (the lovely Watts), sees she is pregnant and needs to get the baby out ASAP. Once the baby is born, they announce the mother dead. All that is known about this woman who died is in a journal found in her purse which Anna takes home. The problem here is that the diary is all in Russian, so she cant read it. Within the journal, however, is a card that leads her to the Trans-Siberian Restaraunt (not to be confused with that crazy heavy metal christmas orchestra they advertise so heavily during the holidays).  So that is the first 10 minutes and pretty much you have the set up of the movie.

While the set up is fast paced and gets things moving very quickly, the film is actually moves at a speed that allows the issues to develop organically, rather than any force from the directors end. The characters and their interactions is where the action is, not the blood or killings. There are no explosions and no plot to take over the world. So once Anna goes to this Restaraunt, here she meets the other folks.

There are four characters that are the focus of the film. You have Anna (as mentioned played by the lovely Miss Watts). Nurse by day, Russian Mob snoop by night. Then there is Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen). He is the driver who knows "nothing". Then there is the father Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl). He is the ruler of the family and a seemingly passionate preparer of foods. Lastly is the son, Kirill (Vincent Cassel). He is a loser looked down by his father, and jealously looks up to Nikolai. 

All of these players are excellent in their roles. I almost want to say perfect, but that would be taking away from it. Mortensen to me is like the new Robert DeNiro in this film. You could see he loves the accent he has donned with the smooth hair and dark glasses. Watts does not seem to stretch too far from herself as she plays a Londoner (although from Australia, I dont think that is too much of a stretch). But as I said earlier, she is captivating to me, so she could have been god-aweful and I would not have known. I think Armin Mueller-Stahl is the other winner of this film. He was great to watch as the mob boss. Totally confident and makes the work look easy.  Cassel plays the son who might have had the most demanding role as his emotions were the most unstable of the bunch. As a jealous son looking for the respect of the father, his anger has to come out in other ways without earning any disrespect.

I am praising all of the work and credit to the actors, but there are other aspects that makes this film work so well. The story is very well written that it serves as a playground for the actors. As I said, the story is not intense nor over dramatic, but it lets the characters develop organically rather than any forceful momentum by the director. Further, the supporting characters are all involved in each others problems. Here we see that the story is not set so much that things have to happen, but rather do happen. 

But let me stress, this is not an exciting movie, and I dont anticipate seeing it again very soon. Its a slow moving picture and you might even catch yourself yawning from time to time. But you cannot ignore that its still a great film. 

I think its interesting to look at Cronenberg's career after seeing this film. One would not have anticipated such a well crafted piece of cinema from someone who put together Scanners or The Fly back in the 80's. To me, the benchmark Cronenberg films are Videodrome and Naked Lunch, both of which offer lots of gross special effects in a highly psychedelic environment. M Butterfly (not yet available on DVD), perhaps, comes closest to this film and his previous, A History of Violence. But these last two films are so well done that is has put Cronenberg into a new era of filmmaking, both for himself and the critics.

 So, with all of that said, I will round this out by saying my friend David initially saw this in the theater and I asked about Watts, and he said she was not as good looking as she has in the past, but looking rather weathered. I think she still looks amazing. So thats my rebuttal. The screenshots I took and you can click them to view them larger. Check out Naomi Watts' deep blue eyes! Simply gorgeous I tell you!

The DVD I watched was the widescreen version which comes with a few special features, none really worth mentioning. It is available in Full Screen for those that think the TV model is the proper way to see a film. Its also available on HD-DVD. I dont think Blu-Ray has a version for this film. Its distributed by Universal who is exclusive to HD-DVD unless your last name ends in Spielberg. 

Some more screen caps

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