The extras are all but perfunctory, but Kinos exquisite 4K transfer is easily the best that Eastern Promises has looked on home video to date.

| Apr 25, 2022

Such are the actual subtleties of Mortensen's performance - the odd sardonic smile; the slight tightening of a look - you're aware, from the off, that what he is on the outside might not have anything to do with what he is on the inside.

| Aug 23, 2018

Eastern Promises has a lot going for it, which makes it all the more disappointing when the story takes a fatal turn towards the end.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 1, 2008

Despite Viggo's total gorgeousness, a nude fight-for-his-life in a steam room has all the titillation of a butcher throwing down a slab of meat.

| Original Score: B- | Feb 22, 2008

Its subtext, which is about sex and violence and the way one often dovetails with the other, and the skill of its making, render it gripping enough.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 26, 2007

Cronenberg is his own master, still ready to throw in the sort of scene few other directors could dare.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 26, 2007

Although relentlessly gripping, the film is more interesting than it is satisfying, let down by the script.

| Oct 26, 2007

Despite the star presence of Viggo Mortensen, David Cronenberg's violent film about the Russian Mafia in London is a disappointment.

| Oct 26, 2007

There are interesting scenes, moments, ideas: but Eastern Promises does not have the sinew and boldness of Cronenberg's best work.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 26, 2007

Accents are as thick as borscht, and vodka flows almost as freely as the blood.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 26, 2007

An instant cult classic.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 26, 2007

It's a role that Mortensen inhabits with great elan. With hair slicked back, a cigarette clamped in the corner of his mouth and a sardonic glint in his eye, he looks as if he's earned every inky stain.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 26, 2007

Slightly hesitant, slightly undercharacterised and gently compromising, hybrid: an oddly diplomatic, if often brutal, dip into the hellish demi-mondes lurking behind bouncer-guarded London doorways.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 24, 2007

Mortensen shines but a contrived, issue-driven plot destabilises what could have been a great Russian gangster movie.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 24, 2007

...manages to blend the clashing of cultures, family resentment, ugly heritage and the unlikely promise of new life without going in circles.

| Sep 21, 2007

Eastern Promises is a straightforward, straight-up Russian gangster movie whose primary achievement is making the Russian gangster underworld feel exotic and menacing.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 21, 2007

...Eastern Promises is as honorable an entertainment as it is a humbling work of art.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Sep 21, 2007

It's Cronenberg's film, but it's the actors who elevate Eastern Promises from mere thriller to some other, more disturbing plane...

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 21, 2007

Suffice it to say it's a bit of primal brutality that lays bare the animal in each of us, fighting to survive.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 20, 2007

Eastern Promises is a subtle and precisely calibrated work of astonishing cumulative power.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 20, 2007