Movie Details
| Title: | Eastern Promises | |
| Director: | David Cronenberg | |
| Year: | 2007 | |
| Genre: | Drama | |
| Times Seen: | 2 | |
| Last Seen: | 07.27.25 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (5)
- Crimes of the Future
- A History of Violence
- Rabid
- Spider
- Videodrome
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 07.27.25 | Internet | Youtube started randomly giving me clips of this movie out of the blue as well as Bruce Willis in The Jackal. It kind of got me in the mood to see both, not because I remember loving either movie but I think more that they evoke memories for me of two things. 1) Back when Hollywood made good-not-great movies to stock the theaters each week, and 2) when I had the time/inclination to watch all these good-not-great movies. The first I think is gone for now maybe forever, but the second I can do something about. It's weird to want to watch a movie I know isn't great but the movies I'm thinking of are not terrible either. Like, The Jackal has a scene with early Jack Black where he gets his arm blown off, and given Bruce Willis' ouvre it's cool to see him go 100% villain for once. I know I'm talking more about The Jackal than Eastern Promises here but they're kinda the same. My memory of this movie was that, coming off the success of History of Violence (which I remember liking quite a bit), it seemed like Cronenberg wanted to work with Viggo again and he found this standard mob story but was interested in the russian mob world and their tattoos in particular. So the movie is ok but the russian mob stuff and the tattoos are interesting, and Viggo's performance was strong because he gets to be a mobster with interesting tattoos. The other big scene in this movie is the bath house fight scene where Viggo fights dudes dong-out naked. It helps that he's in phenomenal shape and has something to swang around. He's like Michael Fassbender in Shame brave, not Ken Jeong in Hangover brave. Ken should've won an oscar for that level of bravery. But still the fight scene is brutal and raw and Viggo's hairless butt is everywhere. And if we're asking if that scene and the tattoos and seeing Vincent Cassell in the snivelly entitled mob son role to Armin Mueller-Stahl's godfather is enough to make the movie good-not-great, then I say yes. After all, if we put it up against a mid Hitchcock like The Man Who Knew Too Much or The Wrong Man, those movies are basically the same thing: a couple stand-out scenes and a decent premise and a good performance from the leading man. That qualifies. So I did feel a little 2007 nostalgia while watching this. Re-reading my notes, the movie's story and pacing still feel a little undercooked to me, but my pre-life crisis 2007 life of going to theaters 5 times a week and seeing stuff like this in new release was pretty fun. |
| 10.11.07 | Alamo Village | Viggo was good and I'd been told to expect something kind of slow and loose which came in handy because this also feels kind of undercooked to me. This has to have spoilers so read no further if you want to stay clean. I was really digging the kind of casual entree into this world of the Russian Mob and liked Armin Mueller-Stahl a lot with how he treats Naomi Watts and whatnot... But I was pretty let down when the whole undercover cop thing happened. I'd MUCH rather Viggo just be a tough guy playing the angles to take over. He could've still not killed the uncle and everything else he did that was nice but been a real hood instead of some russian cop. blah. So familiar in a movie that kind of banks on being a glimpse of something different. And the ending... yeah, it kind of just ends. I think that stems from there not being a very strong plot to begin with. It makes the whole movie feel a little undercooked. I liked it for the most part... but didn't love it. |
