Viggo Mortensen and Naomi Watts star in this new thriller which centres on one of London's most notorious organized crime families.
David Cronenberg's "Eastern Promises" is a relatively straightforward action thriller for the director better known for grotesque "body horror" and psychological dramas. The film represents, as the opening two scenes make clear, the intersection of birth and death in the milieu of Russian crime families based out of London. Right from the start, Cronenberg shows both a birth and a murder, making each of them equally gory and visceral, an appropriate equivalence since both scenes are linked to the same Russian underworld. This intertwining of mortality and new life extends even into the characters of the Russian hitman Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen) and the maternity ward nurse Anna (Naomi Watts), who is pulled into Nikolai's dark world by her attempts to uncover the secrets of the baby she helps deliver at the beginning of the film. Cronenberg handles the thriller plot with verve and wit, and Mortensen gives a phenomenal performance as the hard-edged killer whose body tells the story, in tattoos and scars, of his rough past. This theme becomes most apparent in the movie's already legendary bath-house fight scene, in which a completely naked Mortensen brutally fends off a pair of attackers. This scene, with Mortensen spiritually as well as physically naked, is the culmination of the film's undercurrent of exploring identity and violence as embodied in the human form. This is a smart, economically told thriller with an intensity practically unmatched in modern action cinema. Only Cronenberg could reinvigorate the moldy genre of the mob picture with such psychological density and raw energy.
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Nikolai works as a chauffeur for restaurant owner and powerful Mafia kingpin Semyon and his out-of-control son Kirill. Midwife Anna comes crashing into Nikolai's life after discovering the diary of a young Russian woman who dies while giving birth, and her dealings with Semyon, and a subsequent translation of the diary, provide some horrific discoveries. Anna soon finds herself floundering in an alien world full of brutal and bloody violence, and it's not long before her own life hangs perilously in the balance.
Thriller set among the Russian mafia in London from Canadian director David Cronenberg. Nikolai Luzhin (Viggo Mortensen) is a driver for one of London's organized crime families who are part of the notorious Vory V Zakone criminal brotherhood. The family is headed by Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl), a cold and brutal man who hides his true nature behind his public role as a charming restaurateur and his volatile son and enforcer, Kirill (Vincent Cassell), is Nikolai's closest friend. Nikolai's carefully maintained existence is threatened when he meets Anna Khitrova (Naomi Watts), a midwife at a North London hospital who has been deeply affected by the plight of a teenager (Sarah-Jeanne Labrosse) who died giving birth. The girl left behind a diary written in Russian in which Anna seeks the answers to the baby's lineage. By delving into the diary, Anna has accidentally unleashed the full fury of the Vory. With Semyon and Kirill closing ranks and Anna pressing her inquiries - Nikolai finds his loyalties divided. Lives hang in the balance as a disturbing chain of murder and revenge reverberates through the darkest corners of both the family and London itself.
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