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Eastern Promises
[HD DVD] R0 - America - Universal Pictures Review written by and copyright: Noor Razzak © 2008 (3rd March 2008). |
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The Film
 David Cronenberg appears to be in top form of late, with his previous film “A History of Violence” (2005) garnering a decent box office take for a film of its kind and heaps of praise from critics and various awards. His latest entry into the cinematic zeitgeist has him re-teaming with his “A History of Violence” star Viggo Mortensen. “Eastern Promises” takes us into the otherwise unknown workings of the Russian Mob, or ‘Vory V Zokone’ (Thieves in law). The film’s title can perhaps be a bit misleading if you don’t know anything about it, I recall a friend telling me a humorous story of taking his girlfriend to this film telling her it was a romantic love story about a British nurse who falls in love with a Russian from the wrong side of the tracks. Imagine her surprise when a naked Viggo fights off and brutally kills those two men after him in the bathhouse! I had a good laugh at her expense which probably wasn’t nice but it was too funny not to. One thing is for certain “Eastern Promises” is not a romantic film; it is a dark and occasionally brutal look at the Russian mob, as they try to cover up their secrets. A young girl, Tatiana (Sarah-Jeanne Labrosse) dies after giving birth to her baby girl. The nurse, Anna (Naomi Watts) discovers her diary and tries to track down Tatiana’s next of kin and to get the diary translated from Russian. In doing so she exposes herself to the Vory V Zokone, primarily the mob boss Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl), his son Kirill (Vincent Cassel) and driver Nikolia (Viggo Mortensen) who does all the dirty work. The diary reveals some secrets that the mob prefers to have died with Tatiana as Anna finds herself opening doors that are hard to close. The characterizations were impressive and a thing of beauty to behold especially Viggo who puts his entire being into each role and continues to deliver something new and interesting each time. He’s quickly becoming one of my favorite actors. His level of preparation is unmatched, to get a better grasp of his character he traveled to Moscow, St. Petersburg and the Ural Mountain region of Siberia. He also studied the gangs, prison culture, tattoos and dialect to perfect his take on Nikolai. The evidence is onscreen, he's both terrifying and impressive and certainly deserved that Oscar nomination. The other cast round out an impressive list of performers, Naomi Watts continues to involve herself with great directors and fashioning an interesting CV of roles, while Vincent Cassel seems perfectly cast as the troubled son of a mob boss. The film is appropriately drab in both tone and location, the London we see here is autumn (I guess), continually cloudy and rainy which adds to the atmosphere of the film. Matched with the photography the film gives off a spellbinding effect drawing viewers into this dark world. A word should be spoken about the violence, it is brutal and realistic; violence is nothing new for Cronenberg so fans of his previous work should know what to expect. But keep in mind that there's nothing exploitative about the violence here, it serves the story and at times is disturbing. "Eastern Promises" is not a terribly long film, but it was one of the few instances were I wanted the film to go on for another hour or so…I’ve seen films based on the Italian mob (of which there are many), the Cubans (and other Latino gangsters), the Triads and the Yakuza’s but I have not seen anything dealing with the Russian mob, “Eastern Promises” takes the mob movie and spins it in a different direction, showing us something new and previously unexplored in mainstream cinema and as other films in its genre manages to captivate. “Eastern Promises” is an exceptional film that will probably leave you asking for a sequel when it’s finished. I certainly would be open to it, to see exactly how far Nikolai ends up going.
Video
Presented in the film’s original theatrical ratio of 1.85:1, this high-definition widescreen transfer is presented in 1080p 24/fps and has been created using VC-1 compression. Like other recent Universal releases their HD discs have included top notch transfer and this one is no exception. The image is nice and sharp, fine detail right down to the stones in the streets are visible and colors appear accurate. Skin tones are natural and the overall print is clean. I found that black levels were deep and bold, some noise can be seen as well as light grain sometimes but this is never a distraction.
Audio
This disc is a combo disc so different audio is available on either side of the disc, the HD DVD side includes audio tracks in English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 as well as English Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 and French Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 the standard DVD side includes English and French Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks. For the purposes of this review I chose to view the film with its TrueHD track and found it quite excellent. Dialogue was clear and distortion free, the films ambient sounds comes across well throughout the sound space and the film's score deliverers added depth to the sound mix. There's not a lot of aggression behind this track but it delivers on the immersive quality. Optional subtitles are included in English for the hearing impaired and French on the HD side and English for the hearing impaired, French and Spanish on the DVD side.
Extras
Universal has included only a few extras on this disc they are in the form of two featurettes plus some web-enabled content. All the extras are presented in 1080p high-definition. Below is a closer look at these supplements. First up we've got "Secrets and Stories" a featurette that runs for 10 minutes 31 seconds, this is a basic EPK style clip featuring the regular interviews with key cast and crew about the film, the plot, their characters, etc. including the Russian mob. Some good stuff can be found here but it's all too brief, I wish Universal had released a much longer more in-depth making-of. The other featurette is "Marked for Life" running for 6 minutes 41 seconds and takes a closer look at the tattoos that were applied to Viggo, their symbolism and history. It's interesting how a man's entire life can be read through the tattoos he has on his body. Finally we've got some Web-enabled content accessed via the Ethernet connection on your HD DVD player you can get "MyScenes" which is the bookmarking feature that allows you to select your favorite scenes and also access some Universal trailers. Universal promises more content in the future but since the HD DVD format support is no longer I doubt any new content will be released for the online features anytime soon.
Overall
This disc is light on extras, I expected much more from Universal in that respect. Perhaps when this film is eventually released on Blu-ray we’ll see a decent ‘Special Edition’ release with a plethora of supplements.
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