After "A History of Violence", director David Cronenberg could do no wrong. Now, it's as if he's the second coming of Stanley Kubrick. Critics are lining up to drool all over themselves in praise of Cronenberg's "gifts". I wonder, is that a "special gift" like a dog with three legs?

First off, Cronenberg drifts off into his horror roots like a crack whore drifts back onto the street. Witness the bizarre fascination this film has with throat-slitting. Not only are throats slit, the camera lingers on them all unnecessarily so the audience can watch the skin separate and the blood ooze from the cut. That's always the mark of an auteur, don't you think?

But here's the big thing about "Eastern Promises": it falls into that category of drama I'll call "the baby film". Basically, that's any film where an infant plays some kind of role that's designed specifically to toy with the audience's emotions. Here, a young girl dies in childbirth, leaving a baby and a mystery for a London midwife, Anna (Naomi Watts), to unravel. What she discovers is that the Russian mafia is involved and the baby likely belongs to Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl). In finding this out, Anna develops a relationship with the family's "driver", Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen).

Here's the thing about using a baby as a plot device. For one thing, it's just that, a plot device. Essentially, it's a way for the director to avoid having to explore the complex emotions of human beings because once a baby is involved, the differences between good and evil are so starkly drawn that nobody has to do any hard work anymore. The actors are either affected by the baby or not affected or indifferent and quite quickly, their characters are positioned in the film's emotional hierarchy. Semyon doesn't give a shit about the baby. Anna cares too much. Nikolai is somewhere in the middle. He's the one who gets to teeter between his responsibilities to the family and his emotions toward Anna and the baby. THAT is dumbed down emotional filmmaking.

You see, if the thing at the emotional center of a movie is something that causes the audience's emotions to swing, then actual hard work must occur in order to explore the inner lives of the characters because it's not quite so clear cut about who they are and what they think. I mean, hell, why not have Anna care for a bunch of baby zoo animals and then have Semyon come and club them to death. Then we'll really know what a self-serving, sick bastard he really is.

"Eastern Promises" promises to be a complex human drama, but it's really nothing more than a Hallmark postcard to the kind of movie Cronenberg and his supporters think he's making.