Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen), who is both ruthless and mysterious, has ties to one of the most dangerous crime families in London. But when he crosses paths with Anna Khitrova, a midwife, the truth about his past is gradually revealed.
It's just too bad Eastern Promises, on the whole, promises more than it delivers.
DCist
June 10, 2010
Clearly a companion piece to (and just as good as, if not better than) 2005's fantastic A History of Violence, Eastern Promises is all about blood, in the familial as well as the literal sense.
Slightly hesitant, slightly undercharacterised and gently compromising, hybrid: an oddly diplomatic, if often brutal, dip into the hellish demi-mondes lurking behind bouncer-guarded London doorways.
A captivating and intimidating presence, Mortenson is simply striking in his consecutive Cronenberg film, playing the slick Russian mob figure who suffers from a crisis of conscience with equal parts calm and intensity.
Eastern Promises is a straightforward, straight-up Russian gangster movie whose primary achievement is making the Russian gangster underworld feel exotic and menacing.
Filmfest
September 02, 2010
"It starts very well, and we're immediately drawn into this world of dead pregnant teens, the Russian mob, the hermeneutics of tattoos and the archetypal disappointment of a father with his son."
David Cronenberg's spin on "The Departed," in which lawmen and the lawless were similarly tested within an ethnic mafia's ranks. But where that became an overwrought bloodbath, "Promises" maintained a vicious focus on mob malevolence and personal peril.
