Apart from Viggo Mortensen, this movie is a waste of time. If they had acted it just a bit more over the top, it would have been a fine dark comedy. As it is, it's just dull and unrealistic. The violence is graphic and lurid, but doesn't add much to theme or plot. I felt it was gratuitous. If you want to see a much better movie about Russian mob life, try either "Brat" (Brother), "Brat II", or "Friend of the Deceased" (Ukrainian film). These three films have a lot more to say about life in the criminal trades, and just being human, than "Eastern Promises". Most of the plot line is just totally unrealistic.

Brutal yet artful, subtle yet gripping, "Eastern Promises" packs dynamite in the story, acting, and directing departments. Director David Cronenberg and his new favorite lead actor Viggo Mortensen (they previously teamed up to make "A History of Violence") return to tell a gripping story of the Russian mob in London, and how fate brings the mob into contact with an ordinary family who suddenly finds itself with the power to bring the mob hierarchy down. Mr. Cronenberg doesn't shy away from the brutality of mob violence, but he doesn't linger on it, either. Still, the movie isn't for squeamish viewers.

Two short but satisfying special features round out the DVD: a seven-or-eight minute piece that features the director and actors talking about the film, and a seven-or-eight minute piece about the history and role of the elaborate criminal tattoos featured in the film. Combined, you get a good fifteen minutes or so of satisfying behind-the-scenes information. For most films, that's actually enough for me when it comes to special features. My widescreen DVD featured crisp, clear picture and sound.

In you enjoy films in the organized crime genre, you'll probably like "Eastern Promises" a lot. It has all the elements one expects to see in this type of film, but also throws you a few curves, too.

It's such a simple, nearly cliched, mob story. But it's told here with a frankness and brutality that is something to behold. Not an uplifting tale, but a gritty tale that seems, as much as these things can to a random middle class American, realistic. The tattoos are remarkable as is the look at a very different (Russian) mafia.

Horror legend David Cronenberg (Rabid, Scanners, The Brood, Videodrome, etc.) teams up once more w/ A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE star Viggo Mortensen (The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, A Perfect Murder) to create the dark, underworld masterpiece, EASTERN PROMISES. Mortensen plays Nikolai, a russian mobster w/ a lifetime's worth of lethal experience to go along w/ his body full of prison tattoos. Nikolai is a seemingly ice-cold killer without conscience. Or is he? Midwife, Anna (Naomi Watts from The Ring 1 and 2, King Kong) is plunged into the russian-mafia world after a young mother dies, leaving behind a newborn daughter and a mysterious diary. PROMISES is packed w/ tension, horrific revelations, and a cast of iron-clad characters, including Vincent Cassel as the drunken, very dangerous Kirill, and Armin Mueller-Stahl as the quietly menacing Semyon. Even the minor characters are well-written. Don't miss this one!...

Quick story snapshot~Begin with a neck-slashing murder, move to a hemorrhaging pregnant girl, who dies giving birth to a living baby girl covered in her mother's blood, and focus on the midwife who innocently takes the dead mother's diary (written in Russian)in an attempt to find the deceased's identity (so as not to bury her an unknown). The diary becomes the object that drives the midwife's journey into the dark world of the London Russian mob, where she connects with a stoic, formidable mob chauffeur played by Mortensen, who is not just a driver, we learn pretty fast. Human sex slavery, murder, loyalties, and betrayals all play their part before we find out the true nature of the various characters by film's end.

I had this film sitting around waiting to be watched. I wanted to watch it for 1. Viggo 2. Naomi (both among my fave actors) and 3. due tot he good reviews.

However, the reviews that emphasized gore and violence and "nekkidness" made me decide to wait for a day when a dark film wouldn't drag my mood down too badly. (Yeah, I can be really affected by films, from joyful to depressing.)

I wish I had not waited. The darkness and evil and pain is balanced to a large degree by elements of good and light and courage. It's not a movie that ends happily, but it is a movie that ends realistically and with some hope. Hope that if people take steps to make things right, some things can be made...more right, if not fully right. And that is an ending that doesn't depress me, but makes me feel great respect for people who do step out of comfort zones or take difficult jobs to make the world better. Or just to save one child.

It's the ending that I began with when I described to my husband how greatly this movie had appealed to me (and subsequently re-watched it with him). The climactic scene at the waterfront is so beautifully done--the acting has subtleties in body language and vocal tone (especially Viggo's, and I totally understand the Oscar nomination). The visual and editing--just so powerful and humane, even in the darkness and dirt and grit and horror of what has been and what could have been.

I cannot stress how amazing Mortensen is. His appearance has been altered by tons of hair spray and gel and clothing and tattos. He moves his body and makes little movements with his head that feel..authentic. He moves as if his secrets cloak him. His accent seems quite, quite good (but not being Russian, I can't say for 100% if it is dead-on).

Watts, who is normally such a scene-stealer, is a good match for him, but she doesn't reach his level here. Mortensen has simply absorbed this character too deeply, and he is much more interesting, nuanced, and haunted a character than Watt's. We can't look away when Viggo's Nikolai is onscreen. We are sure he will look ths way or that, tilt his head, smile just so, and give something away to us. Marvelous.

The supporting cast (for it's all supportive when Viggo is on) does a great job, including Vincent Cassell's father-dominated, vulnerable-meets-arrogant, repressed gay mobster son. The scene where he blows up party balloons--wow. His face is so full of pain and anxiety and uncertainty and a host of emotions as he speaks to his little girl that we can momentarily forget just how criminal and unfeeling he can be in other circumstances, and in forgetting, sympathize.

I also found rivetting the "made man" sort of scene, when the criminal leaders come to initiate Viggo--and the tattoos tell their story.

As I said, the last few scenes--the waterfront, the double denouement (Viggo's, Naomi's), overlaid with the voice of the dead girl reading the same lines we heard her say in the opening scenes: Wow.

And for those who like romantic tension, there is tons here. Viggo manages to be threatening looking and aloof and then, bam, he's connecting in the subtle ways with Naomi's character. It's a thrill to watch their scenes together because of the palpable attraction he gives off without being 'romance hero" obvious.

I want to give a special kudo to the writer who places so much foreshadowing--in seemingly trivial acts, in phrases--from the very start that come to fruition beautifully as the film moves to its final moments.

Cronenberg is a director who's entertained me in some films, annoyed me with others, grosssed me out with some. Now, with Eastern Promises, he finally made a movie that made me want to see it again...and a third time.

Mir