Friday night, I was all ready to settle down for an evening of rampant Netflix-enabled television-on-DVD viewing, when a friend called and asked if I wanted to see the new David Crohenberg thriller, Eastern Promises (starring Viggo Mortensen and Naomi Watts) with her and a few others. Part of my brain, suffering from inertia, wanted to just stay home, but the wiser part of my brain told me that I should go and be a social butterfly or I might regret it and not actually ever get it together to watch the film. I had heard good things, but didn't actually think Eastern Promises was my kind of movie (whatever that means). In any case, I wasn't really in the mood to watch a narrative about the Russian mob and white slavery--especially considering how violent the movie was said to be.
Ultimately, I was exceptionally glad my friend called me. Eastern Promises is an incredible film, one I enjoyed far more than I expected. The violence is intense, but isolated, and the rest of the film has a haunting stillness to it that seems to be the new modus operandi for the contemporary thriller (e.g. The Brave One). While my friend was able to provide an instantaneous, intellectual and eloquent post-film analysis, I'm not feeling particularly smart this weekend, so I'll settle for pointing you in the direction of A.O. Scott's NY Times Review.
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