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| Eastern Promises |
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  (7/10)
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Runtime: 96 |
| Public Rating: 7.78 (9 votes) |
Director: David Cronenberg |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: thriller, drama, action |
Year: 2007 |
| Writer(s): Steven Knight |
| Distributor: Serendipity Point Films |
| Reviewed by: Friday and Saturday Night Critic |
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Additional review(s) by:
LaRae Meadows [10/10] (view).
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Director Cronenberg and star Viggo return from their overrated bad movie “History of Violence” with an overrated perfectly-fine B movie. It’s another movie about leatherclad foreign gangsters who are foul-mouthed homophobes and who speak heavily accented English when they should be speaking their native tongue. It’s another movie about the son of a crimeboss who doesn’t live up to his dad. It’s another movie about a flamboyant uber-ethnic crimeboss who loves his grandchildren (just for once, can’t the crimeboss do his job for the same reason the rest of us do our jobs – to get away from our family?). Why Cronenberg has to brush spare accolades off his shoulders is beyond me. “Road to Perdition” took similar material and at least gave it visual flair and something approaching a unique tone, and, of course, “No Country for Old Men” schools “Eastern Promises” about how to take a streamlined B thriller to new places. But “Eastern Promises” is a clean, engaging flick that doesn’t outstay its welcome. Viggo is mesmerizing as the crimeboss’s laidback, very low-metabolism driver, slowly insinuating himself deeper into the mob. He drives both the crimeboss and his weak son (sleazebag Frenchman Cassell, always fun), who is pretty clearly gay for Viggo. Viggo uses this as another stepping stone. Cronenberg’s obsession with bodies comes out in three neat sequences: one finds Viggo “processing” a dead body (blow dryer, cutting fingers, etc.); another is a gangland initiation in which tattoos explain how even a naked body tells a life story; and of course the famous naked assassination attempt.
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