Eastern Promises

"Eastern Promises treads tricky ground, moving carefully between sombre London melancholy and Tarantinoesque gangster swagger. And given just how damn overdone both of those ingredients are, it could be lauded as a remarkable success."

"A rhapsodic movie directed with considerable formal intelligence and brooding power from an original screenplay by Steve Knight, Eastern Promises is very much a companion to "A History of Violence"..."

"Eastern Promises has a compelling story and strong performances to back up what may seem excessive or sensationalistic..."

"The rigor of Mr. Cronenberg’s direction sometimes seems at odds with the humanism of Mr. Knight’s script, but more often the director’s ruthless formal command rescues the story from its maudlin impulses. Mr. Knight aims earnestly for your heartstrings, but Mr. Cronenberg insists on getting under your skin. The result is a movie whose images and implications are likely to stay in your head for a long time..."

"With this medium-paced film Cronenberg lives up to his controversial reputation by throwing shockingly short, sharp moments of gruesome violence at us. While you can't help but feel he's having fun at the viewer's expense, it's easy to forgive him, thanks to the to the intriguing storylines and wonderfully tense and restrained performances his cast deliver, making this an engrossing, if at times, outrageous visual experience..."

"Expertly realized and gunmetal slick, Eastern Promises whirs along with perfect efficiency, but doesn't stir much in the way of visceral horror despite its penchant for treating the human body like a chicken carcass on a block. (Squeamishness, yes)..."

"This brutal, disquieting, and sombre film is easily one of the very best of the year..."

"As in his A History of Violence and his earlier body-horror movies like The Fly and eXistenZ, Cronenberg excels at rapidly changing the film's tempo with short, sharp, shocks of unflinching, unblinking and uncompromising violence..."