Cronenberg's Eastern Promises Spoiler Thread

I think this is significant - it's his moment of weakness. Perhaps he's a bit drunk off the idea of the power bestowed by the stars and lets his guard down

i don't think he knew that being "made" was so that he could be set up, but even though his head is down i don't think it meant that he didn't suspect something. it would be VERY strange if someone like him didn't think that there was anything fishy about the scenario.

and i don't think that he looked relaxed. his head was bowed, but he seemed totally coiled/tense.

But he really doesn't appear to notice their presence until the last possible second

yeah like hey youve been working for me for two weeks wanna join my super secret club :)

maybe he was just playing possum to give the assassins a false sense of safty

but isn't it possible that he thought he might have a better chance of dealing with whoever was coming if it appeared that he was like, "zzzzzzzz"?

ha xpost

Fuk, I want to watch that scene right now

there are cam versions on bittorrent

imo not really worth watching but prob ok for important research

Notice that scene also reveals that Nikolai has both male and female genitalia - a subtle allusion to his duality

I agree that he was caught off guard in the steam room, which did seem out of character.

I wondered whether Kiril's dad told anyone else (like the old Russian mafia dudes who came to tattoo Nikolai) whether the stars were for a setup, but obv. the answer has to be no. It would probably not be seen as an acceptable move anyway by Semyon's peers?

Yeah, I wondered that too, but assumed he'd have no need to tell them and probably wouldn't for his own sake.

yeah this is what i was thinking. you dont let outsiders in on yr sacred rituals. he was going waaaay out on a limb to save his son. which is why it ended up such a sweet situation for viggo.

Semyon's peers probably would've supported the killing of Kiril, as Kiril's killing of his old friend was out of line.

So... I kinda buy into the "happy family" scene at the end as being almost a case of Nikolai daydreaming. Wishful thinking. He gets the kind of things "wrong" that a man would tend to get wrong in a daydream: The perfect, gurgling, beautifully dressed baby; the filmy, flimsy, bare-armed dress on the mother. She might as well be wearing pearls, a shirt-waist and pushing her brand new Hoover. Honestly. That scene is just too idealized, too perfectly happy ending.

And then we're pulled back to Nikolai, sitting in the shadows where he's chosen to make his world, with that heavy expression of heartbreak in his eyes. He's seen a sliver of possible normality and knows he'll never have it.

And ... Has anyone else mentioned how HOV and EP perfectly bookend each other? HOV opens with violence, yes, but immediately afterward with the most idealized, corny, non-realistic family scene in my knowledge of cinema. It's so over-the-top happy cheese that it's hard to watch. But then things turn darker. And darker. And darker.

EP opens in that darkness, goes even darker, to the point of total loss, then comes back to end with another Happy McCheese Family Scene.®

If you consider, for the sake of argument, that HOV actually begins on a day in the desert when Joey Cusack dies and Tom Stall is born, and that EP ends with Nikolai having courted "normality" and chosen the dark, then the tale begins and ends with a man alone.

And just for the record -- the person who said EP is showing four blocks from his/her house? I have to hate you a little. I've seen it, yes, but only by making a five-hour round trip drive.

Feh.

Oh shit, that's a really good reading actually - the daydream thing.

that brief scene manages to be very odd. she and the baby are dressed up, there's a special meal... it's a bit like they're expecting someone.

Has anyone else mentioned how HOV and EP perfectly bookend each other?

it definitely occurred to me that in HOV viggo was a stereotypical "good" character who had dark secrets and in this one he is a stereotypical mobster bad guy who has a secret good side

But they have to do a third. You know, just one more really violent but incredibly well crafted movie, so it can be a "trilogy".

Fie! Fie on trilogies! Fie on quartologies and quintopelies and sextepelies and whatever bazillionth number Robert Jordan was up to before he died.

But seriously... It was thrilling that there was no sequel to HOV, and I hope the same holds true for EP. The pleasure and pain of working out your own vision of the characters' futures is a large part of why those movies work, to me.

did you guys really think this movie was that good? i liked some of it but i didn't find it as endlessly fascinating as the rest of the posters on this thread. and the diary voiceover stuff was brutal.

i mean it's an ok undercover thriller and the fight scene is great but it's not really that special!

I wish it was out on dvd already, it would solve some of my what-to-get-the-kids-for-xmas braindeadness.

I think it is out on DVD. This movie is fucking good but I'm a sucker for Cronenberg so I'm biased.

"i mean it's an ok undercover thriller and the fight scene is great but it's not really that special!"

Define "special"? It's a solidly entertaining well put together film! That's pretty special in this day and age.

My socks were KNOCKED OFF!

Define "special"? It's a solidly entertaining well put together film! That's pretty special in this day and age.

-- Alex in SF, Monday, December 24, 2007 7:43 PM (59 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

i just thought it was way more of a conventional thriller than i'd been led to expect and that there was some really weak stuff in it. like i said, the diary VO, the terrible scenes at home with naomi watts' family... even the reveal that vigo is undercover, which made his character so much less interesting to me.

I saw it on DVD last night. Fantastic film. I like the ambiguity and loose ends left at the end of Cronenberg's recent movies.

what loose ends?

"i just thought it was way more of a conventional thriller than i'd been led to expect and that there was some really weak stuff in it."

That's a fair cop. I mean it's nothing amazing novel or anything. I didn't mind the Naomi Watts when she's at home thing, but the reveal is a bit poorly handled. And while the VO is bothersome the ending ending (down to the final shot) is well played (and I did like the ambiguity of Vito's character in the end--is he using the cops to become kind of the underworld vs. he's a good cop trying to take down the underworld.) All that said it's certainly not half as good as Dirty Pretty Things IMO.

It was certainly compelling and atmospheric, but the twist regarding Mortensen's character made the whole thing a good deal less morally interesting, reducing it to a good guys/bad guys story. Alex's take above is interesting, but I don't really buy it. Still well worth watching though.

it was up on here th other day
(http://movies.nabolister.com/list.php?movieorserie=0)
..im sure it will reappear
divx and firefox are a help too

i liked dirty pretty things but it had a pretty laaaaaame ending (their whole super-awesome secret plan)

what loose ends?

Sorry, missed this response. The loose end I meant is whether Nikolai is "with the police" or "with the mob" at the end of the movie.

he's an undercover cop. considering he does nothing really bad in the movie besides maybe chopping up teh already-dead dude i'm not really getting the moral ambiguity other folks are sensing in this one.

He essentially raped an underage sex slave, and you think he did nothing really bad in the movie?

s1ocki otm, this was ok but not that great. talked to some chick from moscow and she kind of talked me down from my high, which was induced by that fight scene and my <3 of vigo. sub-b-movie at best. 'a history of violence' was so much better unless i talk to some chick from iowa, but even then i doubt it. such a cronenberg fanboy after i saw 'spider.' and you know everything else. god what a great director, hope it doesn't get too bad from here.

no you're right... having sex with the prostitute is defly the worst thing he does. but im not getting why this is any more nuanced or interesting than any other "in too deep!" undercover thriller.

i mean he puts up her uncle in a 5-star hotel for christ's sakes. when he said that i knew the movie was going downhill.

Cronenberg's career this decade sort of defines "nothing special" to me.

My favorite is probably that 2000 short he did for TIFF that's on the Videodrome DVD.

1. everybody otm who said this defines mediocrity as thrillers go (cronenberg: I'll beat hitchcock!! I'll use BLOOD AND GUTS to do it!)

2. how the fuck do you walk away from this confused that semyon sets him up (knowing he's an informer, most likely) and that he is an FSB agent working with Scotland Yard all along?

ok nevermind I did the math, put 1 and 2 together = some folks have just not made a habit of watching all these undercover/espionage thrillers ever

still I think most directors who aren't cronenberg would have told this story with about 16-20 minutes less fluff and gore, and the film would have been better for it. it's a short, neat piece, I honestly see very little that's "open ended" about it at all. Total waste of Viggo after the first "undertaker" sequence and I'd hardly call myself a Viggo fan

so many little "touches" in this film are just a waste of time

yup, pretty much.

Viggo is the only good thing about this film, but he really is great in it and single-handedly makes it watchable.

I dunno. I like Armin Mueller-Stahl as Semyon. He was a pretty effective bad guy, despite any wrongness re: Russianness.

Viggo is the only good thing about this film

The cinematography and use of London locations are pretty good as well. Oh, and that fight.

Actually I enjoyed it. But it's kind of an absurd film when you scrutinise it.

I liked the "verticality" of this (for lack of a better word) -- lots of scenes with the actors (esp. Viggo, with his hair tightly slicked back) standing ramrod straight, shots bookended by walls or slyly-framed architecture. I'm thinking especially of the scene between Mueller-Stahl & the barber behind the restaurant -- AM-S standing on the platform in the background, barber in the foreground, both framed by the lines of the buildings and the walls -- and especially the scene in the bathhouse. It infused everything a sense of tension and enclosure that gave the movie most of its juice.

I'm a softie, tho -- thinking about the plot might make me sad, and the ending was a bit of a whoopie cushion, but I liked everyone in it (even Watts, tho she didn't have much to do after the 1st 30 minutes), liked that the treachery was mostly left unexplained until the aftermath, and had no problem w/ the voiceover (it lent the scene w/ the girl singing right before Viggo paid her a little after-the-fact oomph) or the TWIST.

i loved this

when i watch movies i'm not comparing them to other movies on a scale of one to fucking ten, although if i had to choose a grade i'd give this one a V for VIGGO

i agree with all of lauren's posts and i think the fact that it's even possible to observe what she observed shows what a fully imagined world cronenberg creates. the loose ends aren't in the plot, they're in little provocations and niggles that are just irreducibly there, and set my imagination off. he draws my attention to things that other directors don't - the sound of a tattoo needle; jumping up to get the balloon in the netting; the unsatisfying physicality of a useless motorcycle kickstarter - even if the story itself is no great shakes on paper. i like that he decided to do a genre piece and bring that sensibility, rather than do another freakazoid gristle gun hallucination. even history of violence was too shaggy dog for me.

other things i want to remember:

the little violinist girls

the idiot kid happily yelling "arsenal" in the middle of 10,000 chelsea fans, wearing the wrong color scarf, and then actually pissing on someone's grave - hmm you think he's got something coming to him? woops, your neck just turned into a waterfall. you don't really see that type of thing in a stephen frears movie.