vincent cassel Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I have a few obscure heroes in show business. One of them, as I note here from time to time, is Vincenzo Natali, best known for Cube, but also for an awesome little techno-thriller called Cypher, an offbeat, surreal comedy called Nothing, and the forthcoming Splice (which I would commit atrocities to see right now). He shares my fascination with the unknown and otherworldly, and expresses it on the screen in unfailingly creative and intelligent ways. Another example along the same lines is Don McKellar, whose Last Night is one of the most perfect little movies I've ever seen (though his participation in last year's godawful Blindness shall not go unpunished).

A third hero of mine is Andrew Niccol. I didn't think much of Lord of War, but all of his other projects have been conceptually brilliant in ways that are very much on my wavelength: The Truman Show (which Peter Weir directed from Niccol's screenplay) is probably my favorite film of the 90s (though that changes from week to week); Gattaca is deservingly becoming a sci-fi classic; and Simone is tragically underrated. He's smart, he's careful, and he has a wonderful imagination. Oh, and his just-announced next project, The Cross, is destined to rock my world.

Another gory mafia story from David Cronenberg, this time set not in America's heartland but in the Russian immigrant community of London. Eastern Promises stars Viggo Mortensen as a limo driver and hired muscle for the mob whose life gets very complicated when a young woman is raped and murdered, but not before she leaves behind some crucial evidence that could tie the crime to the mob -- her newborn baby. She also leaves behind a diary, which falls into the hands of a London midwife, played by Naomi Watts. Whereas A History of Violence had a strong forward momentum and a relatively streamlined story, Eastern Promises is sprawling, with more characters to juggle, crosses and double-crosses to keep straight and the kind of attention to detail -- there's a whole Russian mafia 'making' ceremony, for example -- that some will find interesting and others will find tedious. It's a dense, tightly-wound and plotty picture that stops here and there for a bit of blood-curdling violence that will have undoubtedly some audience members on the verge of throwing up.

The film's cast does a uniformly fine job, with Viggo Mortensen never letting his accent slip. Even though we know intellectually that he's putting it on, we can still persuade ourselves to buy him as a Russian import from a tougher, more heartless culture where being the least-talkative person in the room is always some kind of sign of good sense. I especially liked his habit of plunking down his cigarettes wherever he finishes them, which says more about his underlying character than a lot of the dialogue he's given. Among the rest of the cast, Vincent Cassel is a standout as Kirill, the boss's son who thinks he can slap around anyone he wants with impunity and expects to inherit his father's empire. Cassel has been turning in good performances for years and doesn't get nearly as much credit as he deserves, but hopefully more roles in high-profile films like this one will fix that. As for Naomi Watts, she has a more or less thankless role as the straight woman reacting to events around her and trying to protect the baby.

• James Aljian (c.1932-2007) - Vice President of finance for MGM Studios in the 1970s and then for MGM/UA in the early 1980s. He died of cancer April 12, in Los Angeles. (Variety)
• Dick Arnall (1944-2007) - British animator who worked on Yellow Submarine and produced the BAFTA-nominated shorts A is for Autism and Home Road Movies. He died of pneumonia as a consequence of a brain tumor February 6. (Guardian)
• Nair Belo (1931-2007) - Brazilian actress who appears in Heart and Guts and Alberto Cavalcanti's Simon the One-Eyed. She died of heart disease April 17, in Rio De Janeiro. (Globo)
• Ariane Borg (1915-2007) - French actress who appears in The Phantom Wagon. She died April 16, in Couilly-Pont-Aux-Dames, Seine-et-Marne, France. (IMDb)
• Kitty Carlisle Hart (1910-2007) - Actress best known for starring alongside the Marx Brothers in A Night at the Opera. She also starred opposite Bing Crosby in She Loves Me Not and Here Is My Heart and appeared as herself in Hollywood Canteen. After more than forty years away from the movies, she made appearances in Radio Days and Six Degrees of Separation. She was also the widow of Moss Hart. She passed away following a battle with pneumonia April 17, in New York City. (MSNBC)
• Jean-Pierre Cassel (1932-2007) - French actor (pictured) who worked with many of the great masters of cinema. He starred in Melville's Army of Shadows, Bunuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Renoir's The Elusive Corporal, Clément's Is Paris Burning? and multiple films by Chabrol and by de Broca. He also appears among the ensemble casts of Superman II, Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, Murder on the Orient Express, Prêt-à-Porter, the upcoming Asterix at the Olympic Games and the 1973 version of The Three Musketeers and its follow-ups, The Four Musketeers and The Return of the Musketeers. His son is actor Vincent Cassel, with whom he appears in Matthieu Kassovitz's Café au Lait and The Crimson Rivers. He died April 19. (Playfuls)