"Eastern Promises"

This movie grabs you down low and shakes you around from the start. From its life size violence to its vibrant characters Eastern Promises is a movie of flavors. The flavors range from the Russians mob, depicted in lavish colors in the Russian mob bosses restaurant and then less delicately in his sons brothels, to the sweet house of a young nurse, played by Naomi Watts, who stumbles her way into the lives of these mobsters, to the streets of London where these contrasting worlds collide. The story of Eastern Promises is a cohesive unveiling of what lies in the depths of the hearts of a variety of criminals as they struggle with an implosion of dilemmas. We learn about the criminal minds of the mob boss at the top, his young flagrant son who assumes that he will get the crown someday and their employee who is stoically pounding his way into a position of greater and greater importance. Each criminal is starkly different from each other in their motivations yet their fates are twisted together as each one struggles to survive the difficulty drama they are entrenched in. The unfolding of the story reveals the bitter truths about these criminals in a beautiful explosion of flavors, tastes and aromas. In summary, the movie was good.