Eastern Promises (2007): The film follows the mysterious and ruthless Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen), who is tied to one of London’s most notorious organized crime families.

I really liked A History of Violence, so I was curious to watch director David Cronenberg’s new collaboration with Viggo Mortensen.

This is a pretty straight forward story about the Russian mob in London, involving a 14 year old prostitute and her baby. The “twist” at the end was not a surprise, I guessed about Nikolai early on.

But the focus of this movie is not the plot, it’s about the characters and the environments. In particular the Russians, their heritage and their culture (at least the mob culture). Not being familiar with this culture, I was immersed in it and I enjoyed this part.

This being a Cronenberg movie, we get the usual gore and violence, which didn’t really do anything for me. It was shocking, but it also felt fake to me. Or maybe it’s more realistic than Hollywood movie, so it feels different than what I am used to see in movies.

However I liked the shower scene towards the end, a very well filmed and gripping fight. I must say I was distracted by the fake Russian accents. Not that it didn’t sound realistic, but on the one hand I couldn’t understand a lot of what they were saying, on the other hand I just knew that Viggo didn’t speak like that. I’d rather they spoke in Russian all the time, and read subtitles. That’s the most realistic.

This was a good movie which I enjoyed watching. It’s not as good as Cronenberg’s previous one, but it’s certainly enjoyable.

Rating: 3 Stars