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Eastern Promises Movie Review
A young woman wanders into a drug store seeking help. Before the pharmacist can ask what she needs, blood flows down her legs. It’s obvious she’s in distress and about to give birth. Rushed to the hospital where a midwife named Anna (Naomi Watts) is on duty, the pregnant woman delivers and then dies before regaining consciousness.Anna discovers a diary written in Russian on the dead woman’s body and takes it home for her uncle to translate. She wants to know where to reach the baby’s family and believes the diary offers the only glimmer of hope at connecting the newborn with her blood relatives. When her uncle declines, viewing the diary as an item stolen from the dead, Anna finds a business card inside the book and sets out to find anyone at that establishment who might know the young woman’s family.Her desire to see the child united with her own kin sends Anna down a dangerous path. Somehow the deceased is tied to a powerful family of Russian mobsters and by digging into the woman’s past, Anna finds herself caught up in the sleazy – and deadly – London underground.Vincent Cassel and Viggo Mortensen share secrets in Eastern Promises.
Viggo Mortensen stars as driver/bodyguard Nikolai Luzhin, a cold, calculating figure hungry to advance upward in the Russian mob. Mortensen’s tailored appearance perfectly matches the crisp, unruffled manner in which he goes about dispatching his duties – duties that include the removal of a frozen corpse’s teeth and
fingertips. Mortensen plays Nikolai so tightly controlled that the tiniest change in his tone of voice conveys more than a lot of actors are able to do using every tool at their disposal. Snapping off crisp dialogue with a Russian accent, Mortensen is truly mesmerizing.Playing Kirill, Nikolai’s unstable boss, is a scenery-chewing Vincent Cassel. Kirill’s a drunkard with a huge inferiority complex and the overwhelming need to please his father, Semyon (the terrific Armin Mueller-Stahl), the Tony Soprano of the London-based Russian mob. Kirill’s a crazy man who forces Nikolai to have sex with one of their captive prostitutes to prove his manhood, although it’s obvious Kirill would rather have his male subordinate to himself. Cassel plays Kirill as a spoiled psychotic child, confused over his identity and unable to connect with his powerful father. It’s an over-the-top performance, but Cassel gets away with it because it works perfectly opposite Mortensen’s quietness.Naomi Watts is also at the top of her game as a single woman whose motherly instinct propels her into dicey situations. The scenes involving Watts and Mortensen are truly dynamic. If Cronenberg hooks up with Mortensen for a third film, he should strongly consider asking Watts back for another go-round opposite Mortensen.
A lot has been made of the steamy bathhouse scene in which Viggo Mortensen is totally naked while fighting with two Russian mobsters. Is the scene with Mortensen in all his naked glory absolutely necessary? Yes. It fits perfectly into the story, is in no way sexual, and is quite possibly one of the most unbelievably interesting hand-to-hand fight scenes on film. Without giving away any spoilers, suffice it to say the nudity not only fits in the context of the scene but also serves to kick the tension and immediacy of the fight to a much higher level. And Cronenberg does not cheat the audience by blocking the shots in such a way as to conceal Mortensen’s body. Instead, he allows the audience to get caught up in the violence of the moment because of the honest way he’s staged the brutal sequence.
Eastern Promises Movie Awards
Eastern Promises won the Audience Prize for best film on September 15, 2007 at the Toronto International Film Festival.
The film received three Golden Globe nominations for the 65th Golden Globe Awards, being nominated for Best Motion Picture - Drama, Best Original Score and a Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama nomination for Mortensen, but the film failed to win any.
Eastern Promises was nominated for Best Motion Picture - Drama. Viggo Mortensen was nominated for Best Performance By An Actor In A Motion Picture - Drama. And Howard Shore was nominated for Best Original Score for a Motion Picture.
The film was nominated in five different categories in the British Independent Film Awards for 2007, and won in one category, gaining a Best Performance by an Actor in a British Independent Film award for Mortensen.Mortensen was also nominated for Best Actor at the 80th Academy Awards, but told the Associated Press, "If there's a strike I will not go." — a reference to the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike.
On February 12, 2008 the strike ended, and he attended the ceremony, although he lost the Academy Award to Daniel Day-Lewis for There Will Be Blood.
Eastern Promises Movie Cast
Eastern Promises is a 2007 British-American-Canadian thriller-crime film directed by David Cronenberg and screenplay by Steven Knight.
Viggo Mortensen --- Nikolai Luzhin
Naomi Watts---Anna Khitrova
Vincent Cassel---Kirill
Armin Mueller-Stahl --- Semyon
Jerzy Skolimowski --- Stepan
Sinéad Cusack --- Helen
Mina E. Mina---- Azim
Josef Altin --- Ekrem
Donald Sumpter--- Yuri
Raza Jaffrey --- Dr. Aziz
Sarah-Jeanne Labrosse --- Tatiana
Tatiana Maslany--- Tatiana (Voice Only)
Tamer Hassan ---- Chechen
Olegar Fedoro --- Tattooist
Igor Outkine----accordionist and singer
Shannon-Fleur Roux--- Maria
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