Eastern Promises by Cronenberg

Cronenberg's Eastern Promises finally made it to DVD and I had a chance to watch it very recently.
Viggo Mortensen and Naomi Watts star in this thriller about russian mafia in London. An innocent nurse, Anna, crosses paths with the russian mafia when she delivers the baby of a Ukranian woman who dies during labor. Anna finds the woman's journal and attempts to get it translated to send the baby to her family instead of putting up for adoption.

Despite good reviews, I was not blown away by this movie. Cronenberg does a great job of making the characters real and personal. The story telling is extremely well paced and syncronized. However, excessive gore and violence in this movie made me keep my eyes closed for a good half of it.

I have to give Viggo Mortensen extra credit for being such an amazing actor. I do not speak Russian so I cannot judge how credible he was as a native Russian speaker but to me, he reflected the epitome of the Russian Mafia/secret past agent Nikolai. I almost felt like Viggo Mortensen knew Nikolai personally... It was amazing!

I think the reason I was not so impresed by this movie was that I felt like Cronenberg's History of Violence was a better thriller than Eastern Promises. Stylistically or otherwise, I did not feel like there was an improvement. I felt like Cronenberg found a safe zone and stayed there.

I guess it is unfair to judge a director for doing a good job as he has done before, but I really like how creative and bold Cronenberg is. And just because of that, I was expecting something completely different and mind blowing. This movie does not deliver that. It just gives you a predictably well done Cronenberg thriller.