Film Review: Eastern Promises

Eastern Promises

Directed by David Cronenberg. Written by Stephen Knight.

Starring Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts, Vincent Cassel, and Armin Mueller-Stahl.

2007.

[NOTE: I don't want to give the feeling that I'm just burning old material without adding anything new (which I am), but I like the succinct minimalism of these notes. They say everything of real pertinence that I would have mentioned. I will just add one more thing: Eastern Promises functions as a piece of genre defamiliarization, as the gangster movie without a single gun. SPOILERS ahead]


Initial dissatisfaction of reveal that Viggo had been working undercover

but with ambiguous look on his face in the ending

a real companion piece with A History of Violence

the duality of man... both good and bad sides

who is he at the end?

but reversed from A History of Violence

Most Anticipated: The Road

How can you have more than one most anticipated? Shut up, that's how!

Four reasons why I'm looking forward to The Road.


1) Viggo Mortensen. Look at him there, in that picture, all bearded and badass. Viggo has quickly become one of my favourite actors, mostly (entirely?) thanks to his work with David Cronenberg (esp. A History of Violence). Viggo also has Good and Appaloosa coming out this year, which look good and interesting, respectively.

2) Cormac McCarthy. The man wrote the source novel to No Country for Old Men, which I loved, as well as the source novel to this. And ummmm All the Pretty Horses, too I guess.

3) John Hillcoat. The man directed The Proposition, which was all kinds of grimy and gritty and violent and dirty realistic down under western, which would seemingly make it for this project as it's set in...

4) The Post-Apocalypse. How I love post-apocalyptic worlds. Maybe because they so often involve zombies. Not that this involves zombies. None that I am aware of, at least. But I can love them separately. I'm not sure what love came first. It's a chicken and the egg thing.