Eastern Promises

"Anna" (Naomi Watts) in the well meaning midwife who wants to repatriate a recently orphaned child with the family of it's deceased mother. All she has to go on is a diary, in Russian, so she takes it to her uncle "Stepan" (Jerzy Skolimowski) who doesn't really want anything to do with it! There's another clue, though - a card that leads her to a restaurant where she meets "Semyon" (Armin Mueller-Stahl), his rather obnoxious son "Kirill" (Vincent Cassel) and his henchman "Nikolai" (Viggo Mortensen). She gets the older man to agree to do some translating for her, but in the meantime her uncle has also decided to have a go after all - and what "Anna" soon discovers sends a shiver down her spine! She now has an idea as to the paternity of the child, but given what she is now experiencing, she faces quite a quandary in knowing what is best (and safest) to actually do. As she and her own family become more embroiled in the perilous antics of London's gangland activities, it might be that she needs to rely a little on "Nikolai" - the only piece on the board that might be able to help. What now ensues is a well acted and scripted story of power, violence brutality and family - and woe-betides anyone who crosses the hierarchy from the mother country. Watts is on good form here and of the men, Mortensen competently takes the top billing - but it's Cassel - usually a good character actor - who stands out here as the vodka-swilling and truly odious brute, and as the denouement looms the tension is palpable and the conclusion anything but predictable. This works better on a big screen if you can as that evokes a better sense of a London with an evil underbelly, but either way it's still at the better end of the vicious crime genre.

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Andre Gonzales

CinemaSerf