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Top Critics (36)
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DVD (22)
It's just too bad Eastern Promises, on the whole, promises more than it delivers.
...manages to blend the clashing of cultures, family resentment, ugly heritage and the unlikely promise of new life without going in circles.
Eastern Promises is a straightforward, straight-up Russian gangster movie whose primary achievement is making the Russian gangster underworld feel exotic and menacing.
...Eastern Promises is as honorable an entertainment as it is a humbling work of art.
Suffice it to say it's a bit of primal brutality that lays bare the animal in each of us, fighting to survive.
It's a mouthful of blood with a vodka chaser.
Quite possibly the best film of the year, it is to be seen at all costs.
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.
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.
Even if the frequently low-key plot suffers from the occasional sleepy stretch, Mortensen turns in a magnificent performance.
Late-period Cronenberg masterpiece
David Cronenberg is a director who sets out to bring life (and death) back to violence. In Eastern Promises he does just that. It is a movie that will make audiences squirm and look away.
Mortensen is very convincing as Nikolai, and his Russian accent is impeccable.
Un ejemplo de cine negro contemporáneo realizado y narrado con gran precisión. Excelente elenco donde se destaca la notable labor de Viggo Mortensen.
Eastern Promises has a lot going for it, which makes it all the more disappointing when the story takes a fatal turn towards the end.
This is my favorite David Cronenberg film to date.
...a Godfather for a new culture and era.
Poderia perfeitamente ter se revelado um thriller absolutamente convencional caso não tivesse, a seu favor, dois elementos importantíssimos: a direção segura e intrigante de David Cronenberg e, claro, a performance hipnótica de Viggo Mortensen.
Despite Viggo's total gorgeousness, a nude fight-for-his-life in a steam room has all the titillation of a butcher throwing down a slab of meat.
David Cronenberg proves he doesn't have to use violence to tell a good story.
If you're a fan of crime flicks, Viggo Mortensen or director David Cronenberg, this movie is sure to give you what you want.
The DVD gives Cronenberg's crime drama, which was a commercial flop, a second life with interesting bonuses such as Marked for Life, a segement in which helmer analyzes the hidden history behind Russian tattoos as well as their symbolic and visual power.
Surprising and rather suspenseful crime drama and the perfect follow-up from the director who composes a pleasing violent moral duality tale...
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