Movie Review: Eastern Promises

Eastern Promises was directed by David Cronenberg who is known for pushing the limits of entertainment with thought provoking, often bizarre and gory film subjects. His talent for capturing a raw and brutal cinematic style of reality is on display in expert fashion once again in Eastern Promises, which is a story that revolves around Russian mobsters. Naomi Watts plays a woman who has come into possession of the diary of a woman that died giving birth. The diary contains some incriminating evidence, perhaps involving a deadly family of Russian mobsters and they soon set into works the grisly tasks of covering up crimes. Viggo Mortensen plays a man who seemingly is working his way up from being just a driver to being a fully made man within the crime organization and the film becomes a story about him as well and eventually the chemistry between his persona of ultimate darkness and why and how the Watts played character is attracted to him. Is he as bad as the others or will he come through on the side of goodness in the end?

The acting in Eastern Promises is as good as you can expect it to be: which is very good. Mortensen really steals the show, though Watts holds her own. It is once again a director's piece really for Cronenberg, with his dark moody style swirling around everything and truly capturing the viewers mind. You can almost tell if a movie is a Cronenberg movie just as you can if a movie is a David Lynch movie or a Tim Burton movie, always that same powerful and familiar style.