A standing ovation must go to Viggo Mortensen in Eastern Promises. There is no doubt that he gave everything to this movie and Eastern Promises was a better movie for it. This is not to say that the performances given by the other actors/actresses including Naomi Watts, Academy Award nominee Armin Mueller-Stahl and Vincent Cassel didn’t contribute but no one was as vulnerable as Viggo was in the shooting of this movie.

Naomi Watts plays a midwife who delivers a child to an identity-less 14 year old Russian girl who does not survive. Her only clue to the child’s family is a diary. A diary that leads her into the evils and brutal community that is Russian organised crime when she finds a business card for a Trans-Siberian restaurant which happens to be owned by Semyon (Mueller-Stahl) – the leader of a notorious Russian mafia family. She runs into Viggo Mortensen’s character outside the restaurant where we find out that he is the driver of Semyon’s son and apparent heir, Krill. However, as with all thrillers things are not always what they seem and things are not always black and white.

Eastern Promises is an incredibly gory and violent movie but not in the sense that something like Shoot ‘Em Up is where the violence is constantly in your face. In Eastern Promises the scenes of gore, including the throat cutting, the chopping off of fingertips, and the one-sided naked fight scene in the Turkish baths (I must say a glorious scene where Viggo brings everything, and I mean everything to the table), are more confrontational because of their scarcity throughout the movie. Jenny in particular seemed extremely horrified, yet gripped, by these scenes.

For a thriller the movie doesn’t actually have any real surprises or unimaginable twists but there are enough turns of the story to keep you involved until the movie reaches its satisfying, inevitable, conclusion. That is was also set and filmed in London will have me seeing London through different eyes. A thoroughly absorbing movie Eastern Promises deserves to be seen, if only for that one scene in the Turkish baths. You’ll know it when you see it. Rock on Viggo Mortensen.