Eastern Promises… but does it deliver?
Monday, March 17th, 2008 by Frank
Very entertaining, but fairly predictable gangster movie fare all in all. Watch it, but don’t get your hopes up too much.
Review of Eastern Promises
Rated as /5 on Mar 17 2008 by Frank
Eastern Promises, directed by David Cronenberg, seemed to get a fairly positive reaction all around. But then so did A History of Violence which I was ultimately disappointed with.
History of Violence started out really promising, and to be honest held me right up until William Hurt started into his cartoon character in the final act.
So I wasn’t holding my breath for Eastern Promises.
However, a couple of people then told me it was good - people who, like myself felt let down by A History of Violence, so I decided to have a look at it.
Vincent Cassel was good, though he played his character a little two dimensionally and might have benefitted from finding a character the audience would sympathise with more, Naomi Watts was good, but I would have preferred a genuine Londoner and Armin Mueller-Stahl was really solid if never really quite believable as being quite as brutal as he should have been.
I enjoyed it. Let me say that from the begining. I enjoyed it mostly because of Viggo Mortensen’s performance, and because overall it’s a fairly solid movie with good performances and a subject matter that we all love in the films: Gangsters.
But… again I felt a little let down. Not as let down by A History Of Violence, because that film was great up until the final act and then seemed to change style and tone completely… but I still felt let down.
Eastern Promises doesn’t change in style or tone, but it just never really quite takes off either.
I know a lot of people think me a fairly harsh critic, but I felt like this film didn’t quite know exactly what kind of film it was. There were certain things going on in the film which I felt were signposted in neon, and yet were later revealed in such as way that you felt you were supposed to be surprised.
I knew the story from the first five minutes… but I kept assuming I was wrong. I kept assuming I was being set up for a fall. That the obvious wouldn’t happen, that something left of field would pop out and blindside me, dragging me into a wonderful twist that would knock my socks off.
It never happened, and the film simply trundled pleasantly through to it’s finale.
Ultimately? Watch this film, it’s very entertaining, but don’t expect too much - it’s not the edgy new look at the Russian/Eastern European underworld in London that it thinks it is - it’s just another enjoyable but predictable gangster movie.
Entries (RSS)