Eastern Promises
EASTERN PROMISES (18)
D: David Cronenberg
Focus Features/BBC/Astral Media/Corus/Telefilm
Canada/Kudos (Paul Webster & Robert Lantos)
UK/Canada/USA 🇬🇧 🇨🇦 🇺🇸 2007
100 mins
Crime/Thriller
W: Steven Knight
DP: Peter Suschitzky
Ed: Ronald Sanders
Mus: Howard Shore
Viggo Mortensen (Nikolai Luzhin), Naomi Watts
(Anna), Vincent Cassel (Kirill), Armin Mueller-Stahl (Semyon), Sinead Cusack (Helen), Jerzy Skolimowski (Stepan), Donald Sumpter (Yuri)
A 14-year-old Russian prostitute dies during childbirth in
a London hospital and Anna, the nurse who helped deliver the newborn baby, finds in her possession a diary which implicates members of the Russian mob of her rape.
Anna, of Russian origins herself, delves further into
matters and becomes caught up amongst the lives of criminals.
Eastern Promises begins with immediate bloodshed and the
violence continues throughout. Naomi Watts' performance is excellent, but the film is stolen by Viggo Mortensen's Russian gangster.
Screenwriter Steven Knight tackled similar subject matter
involving London's seedy underbelly in Dirty Pretty Things (qv), which has a better story, but this is a far more entertaining film.
7/10
