Gripping Thriller

Eastern Promises (2007)
A teenage girl dies while giving birth, prompting a mid-wife (Naomi Watts) to begin a search for the girl's family, plunging her into the gangster world. Meanwhile, the killing of a man, leads to a driver (Vigo Mortensen) trying to protect his boss, from the friends of the dead man, and himself. As both stories cross he finds himself being drawn to the mid-wife, as she and her own family become potential targets....

Written by Steven Knight, this movie shows just what people will do not only for revenge, but also to keep secrets. Cronenberg, has directed a film that while not up to his last movie, A History Of Violence, or his masterpiece Dead Ringers, is still a gripping thriller. He's greatly helped by good performances from Watts, Sinéad Cusack, Vincent Cassel and Armin Mueller-Stahl as members of the Russian mob and an astonishing performance from Vigo Mortensen as Nikolai the driver. As an actor he is getting better and better and he deserves an Oscar nomination at least for his work here.

Cronenberg doesn't skip out on the violence here either. The movie starts with a brutal throat slitting, shown in it's bloody detail, and a brilliant fight scene in a steam house between gangsters, that's bloody as hell, and for me one of the best action scenes I've seen this year.

It's not all great though. A character twist at one point was a bit obvious, and the idea of a midwife hunting down a girl's family like that, or having members in her own family that are from Russia or a Russian background is a little contrived. But these are only minor flaws.

Cronenberg and Knight have created a gripping thriller, that deserves to be seen.

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