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Eastern Promises
Eastern Promises is David Cronenberg's follow-up to A History of Violence. It's completely different - yet it feels the same.
Eastern Promises is a thoughtful, almost graceful movie. It's not your average mafia story by any means, but it has plenty to offer the more discerning viewer. I enjoyed this film: I think the average moviegoer will enjoy it: Testosterone Satisfaction Rating: - one particularly startling moment of violence, but it loses a mark for having to watch Viggo Mortensen's little willy flapping around before we get to it. To enjoy this film you should be: patient.
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That probably has a lot to do with Viggo Mortensen's presence. We know him as Aragorn, and it's to his credit that we
never think of him that way - he's a very convincing Russian mafia driver. Cronenberg seems to have taken the criticism
of his previous movie to heart and has abandoned the snail's pace, adopting a more concentration-friendly trot, and the
intensity has been toned down a notch - though no-one told Naomi Watts. Her role as the nurse trying to track down an
orphaned baby's family is the least convincing - partly because she wears the same intense expression all the time, much
like Jodie Foster in 
I was worried about Eastern Promises. The first twenty minutes or so is rather dull and uninspiring, but it gained a slow
hold over me like a python biding its time, constricting whenever its victim takes a breath. There isn't actually very
much plot, but it never seemed like too little - the increasing atmosphere alone is enough to hold the interest, and
Mortensen carries the role excellently, as does the mafia godfather-figure Armin Mueller-Stahl, who is a veteran actor of
more than fifty years and a hundred movies, and yet has never troubled my consciousness until now. There is,
as you would expect from a Cronenberg movie, some violence involved, including one particular moment which I have to
confess actually made me gasp in the cinema - not something I can remember ever doing before. To my relief I wasn't the
only one, and a small ripple of nervous laughter actually followed the moment. You don't see the moment of
gruesomeness, at least not graphically, nevertheless it was an immensely powerful moment and gets it a full extra mark
on its own.
