"Eastern Promises" is no ordinary crime thriller, just as Cronenberg is no ordinary director. Beginning with low-rent horror films in the 1970s, Cronenberg has moved film by film into the top rank of directors, and on this film he wisely reunites with Mortensen, star of their "A History of Violence" (2005). “A History of Violence” brought director David Cronenberg a massive amount of applaud, a flicker of box office might, and returned a focal point to his filmmaking.We've seen plenty of Irish and Italian gangsters in the movies, but comparatively few Russians. With the fall of the Iron Curtain, criminal organizations centered on ex-Soviet immigrants have grown to frightening proportions, yet few motion pictures have really tackled them as a serious subject and Cronenberg's “Eastern Promises” is one of them.
Cronenberg -- the master of body horror as a path to the soul -- begin his mesmerizing power-punch of a thriller with a hemorrhage. The bloody fetus that we watch a fourteen-year-old Russian girl’s uterus struggle to expel is a child of rape. The teenage girl who hemorrhages is raced to a hospital and dies in childbirth in the arms of a midwife named Anna Khitrova (Naomi Watts). Fiercely determined to protect the helpless surviving infant, Anna resolves to try to trace the baby's lineage and relatives. She uses her Russian-born mother and uncle (Sinead Cusack and Jerzy Skolimowski) to translate the dead girl's diary, and it leads her to a Trans-Siberian restaurant run by Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl) and his son Kirill (Vincent Cassel), the head of the mafia family called the Vory V Zakone that's main business is to traffic girls, drugs and other illegal materials. Anna's path leads to Nikolai Luzhin (Viggo Mortensen), a driver and butcher for the mafia.
When Kirill gets into trouble with a rival gang, Nikolai offers his assistance and Semyon replies with an invitation to join the brotherhood. The deeper Nikolai sinks into the world of the Vory, the more Anna discovers about the baby's past, the more Nikolai helps her in his unique menacing way against the Vory V Zakone. Is Nikolai essentially good? Is he evil? It's for you to find out in the remaining part of the movie as Anna and Nikolai face up against the mafia forces and see who will ultimately end up on top and the “surprise” twist in the end that solves all the mysteries and problems.
The “Eastern Promises” is really not a movie about how and what, but rather why. So don't miss any detail in the story to fully understand and appreciate the essence the movie. The movie lasts for 1 hour and 40 minutes of thriller and crime busting series of events. MPAA rated it as “R” for strong brutal and bloody violence, some graphic sexuality, language and nudity. Enjoy!
