Product Description: Viggo Mortensen and Academy Award® nominee Naomi Watts star in this electrifying thriller from critically acclaimed director David Cronenberg (A History of Violence). Criminal mastermind Nikolai (Mortensen) finds his ties to a notorious crime family shaken when he crosses paths with Anna (Watts) a midwife who has accidentally uncovered evidence against them. Their unusual relationship sets off an unstoppable chain of murder mystery and deception in the explosive film critics are calling "provocative and engrossing" (Claudia Puig USA Today).System Requirements:Running Time: 101 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: MYSTERY/SUSPENSE/CRIME Rating: R UPC: 025193330024 Manufacturer No: 62033300
Amazon.com: David Cronenberg's signature obsessions flower in Eastern Promises, a stunning look at violence, responsibility, and skin. Near Christmastime in London, a baby is born to a teenage junkie--an event that leads a midwife (Naomi Watts) into the world of the Russian mob. Central to this world is an ambitious enforcer (Viggo Mortensen) who's lately buddied up with the reckless son (Vincent Cassel) of a mob boss (Armin Mueller-Stahl, doing his benign-sinister thing). Screenwriter Steve Knight also wrote Dirty Pretty Things, and in some ways this is a companion piece to that film, though utterly different in style. The plot is classical to the point of being familiar, but Cronenberg doesn't allow anything to become sentimental; he and his peerless cinematographer Peter Suschitzky take a cool, controlled approach to this story. Because of that, when the movie erupts in its (relatively brief) violence, it's genuinely shocking. Cronenberg really puts the viewer through it, as though to shame the easy purveyors of pulp violence--nobody will cheer when the blood runs in this film. Still, Eastern Promises has a furtive humor, nicely conveyed in Viggo Mortensen's highly original performance. Covered in tattoos, his body a scroll depicting his personal history of violence, Mortensen conveys a subtle blend of resolve and lost-ness. He's a true, haunting mystery man. --Robert Horton
Stills from Eastern Promises . Photos by Peter Mountain.
Vincent Cassel (left) and Viggo Mortensen (right) star in David Cronenberg's EASTERN PROMISES, a Focus Features release.
Armin Mueller-Stahl (center) stars in David Cronenberg's EASTERN PROMISES, a Focus Features release.
Viggo Mortensen (left) and Naomi Watts (right) star in David Cronenberg’s EASTERN PROMISES, a Focus Features release.
Viggo Mortensen (left) and Naomi Watts (right) star in David Cronenberg’s EASTERN PROMISES, a Focus Features release.
Naomi Watts stars in David Cronenberg's new thriller EASTERN PROMISES, a Focus Features release.
Armin Mueller-Stahl (left) and Naomi Watt (right) star in David Cronenberg's EASTERN PROMISES, a Focus Features release.
Mina E. Mina (left), Vincent Cassel (center) and Viggo Mortensen (right) star in David Cronenberg's EASTERN PROMISES, a Focus Features release.
Vincent Cassel stars in David Cronenberg’s EASTERN PROMISES, a Focus Features release.
Viggo Mortensen stars in David Cronenberg’s EASTERN PROMISES, a Focus Features release.
Cronenberg as Thriller Director, Part II Eastern Promises (David Cronenberg, 2007)
Film critic Jim Emerson has said that the central fight scene in Eastern Promises is "sure to go down as a raw, brutal, and pulse-pounding landmark in the history of fight scenes....If a fight scene doesn't make you feel like you're a part of it, so that it quickens your heartbeat and your breathing, then it's a failure." (Scanners, Sept. 10, 2007) And yes, Eastern Promises joins that very small list of modern movies-- They Live, Girlfight, Fight Club-- that will give you a bloody nose just watching them. (Oddly, I haven't seen anyone comparing the fight scene in Eastern Promises to its obvious cognate in A History of Violence, the infamous scene on the stairs.) Looking at the fight, by itself, is a good way to drive into the core of David Cronenberg's genius, the uncanny ability to unnerve us with the body that he's displayed in the thirty-two years between his first big-screen production, Shivers, and now. Cronenberg is an auteur of bodily horror; even if he seems to have retired from the explicitly-gross genre after the beautiful, underrated eXistenZ and gone into the more mainstream thriller, these scenes have the same effect, albeit more muted, than the shocking birth scene of The Brood or the head explosion in Scanners: scenes that are no less shocking thirty years later, despite so many pale imitations, and despite our tolerance as a culture for movie violence being so much higher than it was in the late seventies.
Eastern Promises is, at its heart, a love story, just as A History of Violence was before it (and, for that matter, as The Brood was before that). It starts when Russian gangster Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen, whose penchant for accents never fails to amaze me) meets Anna (Naomi Watts), a midwife who discovers the diary of a woman who died in childbirth and wants to return it to the woman's family. The contents of the diary, when translated, tie the leader of the gang Mortensen's working to the child. After finding out Anna's Russian uncle read the diary, the gang leader (Armin Mueller-Stahl) orders the uncle killed, and the thriller part of the film begins. But-- and this is odd for a Cronenberg film-- the thriller plot almost takes a backseat to the relationship between Nikolai and Anna, who are so obviously meant for one another and, of course, can't be together.
Ah, but then there's the fight scene, which is at best tangential, but during which Cronenberg's body horror resuscitates itself and comes roiling to the fore. The actors themselves did the entire scene, no stuntmen, and if the sound effects were later overdubbed, they were overdubbed with the actual sounds of fists on flesh, which are so notably absent (replaced by more dramatic sound effects) from so many other films. It's the fight scene that shows us Cronenberg's attention to detail and passion for realism in his films, even when those films are far beyond the bounds of the real. It's these things that made me see films such as Scanners and Videodrome as successes, back when I first saw them (and, still, today; Scanners sits high on my list of the best movies ever made). And when you take such a philosophy and put it into a film that actually realistic, how can you not come up with a winner?
The movie does everything Hollywood doesn't. It's tense without consciously creating tension, dramatic without consciously creating drama. It's a love story that has no love whatsoever in it, just two people who are civil to one another when they should by rights be clawing each other's eyes out. How it can work, and work so very well, is something Hollywood has forgotten, and it's why I find myself liking so many foreign films better than their Hollywood cognates. (Eastern Promises, done by a Canadian director and filmed entirely on location in London, written by a British guy, is foreign enough to count as foreign, for the purposes of this discussion.) Those of you who previously dismissed Cronenberg as a horror director, it's time to go back and re-evaluate his new career as a director of crime thrillers; perhaps, once you see what he's on about here, you'll find yourself with a great deal more appreciation for what he did in his older movies. ****
Subdued, Intense, Fast-Paced I really enjoyed Viggo Mortensen in David Cronenberg's A History of Violence, so when I heard they were teaming up again for Eastern Promises, I had very high expectations.
Eastern Promises offers a powerfully subdued yet intense performance by Viggo Mortensen as a Russian driver/enforcer working his way up London's most notorious Russian crime family. Mortensen has proven himself a chameleon with the roles he's chosen of late, and I had no trouble accepting him as a merciless, cold, calculating--and oddly charming--criminal.
The premise of the story seems straightforward on the surface, but there are some complex developments that caught me unawares. Essentially Naomi Watts, a hospital worker, is trying to track down relation for a baby recently born to a teenage Russian prostitute who died during labor. All she has is a diary written in Russian, which, as fate would have it, leads her right to the door of the Russian mob and Viggo Mortensen. Watts finds herself intertwined in an alien world, ultimately putting the baby in more danger than she ever could have realized.
Cronenberg delivers a compelling and utterly realistic film delving into a topic I found completely original. I've never seen much involving the Russian mafia, especially one based in London, so there was nothing familiar to me about this movie. I'm certain that's one of the many reasons I enjoyed it so much.
There are moments of potent violence in Eastern Promises, but they are brief and not as frequent as you might expect. The psychological tension is palpable in this film, and that's what will have you on the edge of your seat more so than any bloodshed.
I would, however, be remiss to avoid discussing the infamous bathhouse knife fight. Yes, Viggo Mortensen displays extreme devotion to his character by recording a scene totally nude as men attack him with knives in a bathhouse. I suppose if you hit pause you could see everything you wanted to know about Mortensen, but it all happens so fast and the camera work is so sporadic that the viewer sees nothing more than glimpses and blurs. I can't imagine getting tossed around on tile floors like that without any sort of ... well, you know. Mortensen is definitely willing to take one for the team and suffer for his art.
Eastern Promises moved at an incredibly fast pace and the tense storyline and character-driven acting impressed me to no end. I had high expectations for this film, and they were exceeded.
~Scott William Foley, author of The Imagination's Provocation: Volume I: A Collection of Short Stories
With the Cronenberg touch For whereas "A History of Violence" was relevant, horrifying, masterful, suspenseful and haunting (staying in your mind long after its end; getting under your very nerves even), "Eastern Promises" is merely a passable story served up with the Cronenberg touch. Its ending even felt a little incomplete to me, a few elements unexplained (and not in a good, open-ended way). But against all other contenders out there this season, it's worth a look
Eastern Promises Delivers!!! I think this movie is wonderful for those who love mob/mafia movies. Vigo Mortensen was wonderful and completely believable (and nude). I think that this movie is a little on the short side, I wish there was more detail in the end of it, but it really doesn't take away from the total impact of the movie. I was really intrigued by the tension between Naomi Watts and Vigo Mortensen, they were truly electric together. Overall great film, two thumbs up from me.
Eastern Promises Very much along the lines of A History of Violence - lots of violence. Anyone interested in the Russian Mafia will find this very insightful. Not the sort of movie you will want to watch over and over, but still very entertaining. Naomi Watts seems a bit light weight for her role which needed a more gritty actress in my opinion (Uma Therman would have been a better choice I thought).
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