Now, apparently David Cronenburg has directed a lot of good movies (The Fly, Scanners, etc.), but I had only seen one of them prior to veiwing Eastern Promises. A History of Violence is that movie, and yeah it kicks 12 levels of ass… Like its awesome and stuff. So when I saw that there was another film that was directed by Cronenburg and starring Viggo Mortensen, I had to watch it. Note: Viggo was also the star of A History of Violence.

Unlike A History of Violence, though, I really had no idea what to expect from this movie. When I went into A History of Violence, I was expecting an enormous can of whoop-ass to be opened. And it was. And it was opened in a certain scene in Eastern Promises… Its quite a while into the film, but its worth the wait…. But I’ll get into that later.

The film was a good Russian mob movie, when it comes down to it. It was the story of a young woman played by Naomi Watts, who is a midwife who delivers a baby of a dying Russian girl. The girl dies, but leaves behind her diary, written in Russian. Watts’ character then goes to a Russian restaurant and asks the owner if he can translate the diary. The owner of the restaurant ends up being the boss of the local mob branch and has a link to the girl. This causes a series of events to occur that eventually lead to the baby being wanted by the Russian mafia.

In between these events, Watts’s character meets a “driver” for the mob played by Mortensen. They have a few exchanges throughout the movie, and their encounters are very intriguing. There is a plot twist at the end involving Nikolae, Mortensen’s character, but I kind of expected something like it.

Granted, this was a good film without it, but the badass kick-ass scene that I was talking about earlier really made the film for me. I’ll summarize it briefly and then let the realization to sink into your brain that you are going to watch this movie: Viggo Mortensen gets into a brawl with two Russian mobsters armed with sickle shaped knifes. He manages to overcome them by himself, and in the nude and in a public shower, no less.

Now I don’t know about you, but I would be too embarrassed because of my nakedness and would most likely die of embarrassment. Just kidding, I would go apeshit on those Russians, towel or not. Viggo’s a badass…

But yeah the movie in it’s entirety was pretty awesome and I would definately reccomend it to anyone, as long as you don’t mind seeing a little sausage. No pun intended.

Rating: 80/100

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