Eastern Promises

Cronenberg had not made a good film since 1986's "The Fly."

Then Viggo Mortensen stepped into his life and since he has made two very good movies. The newest of which is Eastern Promises.

Eastern promises revolves around Anna (Naomi Watts), a mid-wife at the local hospital who recently had a miscarriage. One night a girl appears in the hospital and she is giving birth. The woman ends up dying, but the baby lives. Anna, in hopes for finding the babies home, takes the girl's Diary home. The girl's diary is in russian, so she asks her uncle to translate, which he refuses to do since she "robbed the dead." Anna finds the card for a restaurant in the diary. So, in hopes that it isn't just a restaurant she liked, Anna goes to the restaurant.

Which ends up to be owned by the russian mafia. On top of that, it ends up that the diary holds secrets about the russian mafia that they do not want out. All the while there is an up and coming mobster trying to get to be a full "vor" (member of the mafia), Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen). He does what he is told most of the time, but he also does what he feels is best for the family or his situation.

I will just address my only problem with the movie right here, since it is a problem with the script. There are two moments in the movie that they unviel something big about a character. Something that should and WOULD change everything that is going on in this movie, but it doesn't. Those two really facts that are presented as important information end up simply being useless and one ends up creating a little bit of confusion at the end. Which, admittedly could have been what Cronenberg was going for, but I really felt detracted from this otherwise very straight forward film.

All of the acting was very good. Watts does a fine job as usual. If it wasn't for The Ring 2 I would say she always delivers a good, to very good performance and she does it once more. In fact, I would say this one is a very good performance. There is a want for that child that she lost which builds for her want for the baby to have a good life. Mortensen delivers his usual stoic performance, but he rocks at it and here is a total badass in no matter what he is doing, so it is perfectly fine by me. I hope he finally gets a oscar nod for this, but I highly doubt it. The other notable person here is Vincent Cassell. Cassell plays the son of the mob boss and he is a slimey little worm. Around papa he is a coward, around everyone else he flaunts the fact that his dad is high up in the vor.

This movie is definately Cronenberg's style. Not his old style, while that is still there, his new style is definately toned down. He is now relying even more on the actors before. While his old films where very much about excessive amounts of gore and monsters that oozed sexuality, his new ones have short spurts of violence until it builds to the big violent moment in the film, and this moment is just... wow. Cronenberg cuts out all sound but the punches and the slices from the film and it has an incredible effect. It is one of the most powerful, painful fight scenes I've ever seen. You will feel every hit, every cut and it will leave you with that feeling for a while after the movie.

This is the first movie that people are saying that can rack up some nods, and it is really good. Except for two flaws that I felt detracted from the film, this movie works in almost all of the bits. In fact, when those 2 things are unvield, it really works and you are excited to see how it develops, but it never does. One, in fact, never needed to be stated because it was brought out in the actors performance before hand. Since this is a legitamate movie in our region, it is bound to not be in the area long, so see it soon.