Review of Eastern Promises (2007) by Robert M — 23 Jul 2011

There were a few things that I didn't like about this film, plot holes in particularly.

Why is Anna so naive?? Why would she trust ppl that she doesn't know, given what Tatiana went thru, which should have been pretty obvious, since they, Anna AND the hospital staff, would have figured out pretty early upon getting her into the hospital the needle marks on her arms, a blood test confirming the heroin, a girl that young having a child, etc.

Which begs the question why the police essentially never got involved, until near the end of the film when Nikolai told the police supervisor to arrest Semyon for the statutory rape of Tatiana; and even then, the police should have known that Semyon was dangerous enough to try and do something to the child. (Plus, earlier than that, once she knew Tatiana's age and who the father was why didn't Anna go to the police and report it??! She had no idea what Nikolai was or that he would do the right thing... Her character was just to dumb!) The fact that the police did not see fit to have the child placed into protective custody is ridiculous! In some sense perhaps it is besides the fact the police should have been involved from the moment the girl collapsed to the floor, and/or vise versa, if at least one of those two idiot's in the pharmacy had reacted like a normal person should. ...even if they were just stupid & didn't know what to do & how to behave, why wouldn't the police have gotten involved once the ppl in the hospital figured out that this girl was brutalized, obviously, even if it was self inflicted, with the needle marks, etc; she obviously didn't harvest the opium herself, she had to get it from somewhere. (Perhaps the naivety possessed by Anna can be attributed to all of the character's that work in the hospital, as well as the police.) Perhaps common sense just isn't that common, even in the movies.

When did Papa/Semyon tell Nikolai to kill Stepan?? They seemed to have a conversation about Stepan but, only after he was presumably dead & at least went missing, as far as his family was concerned.

The fight scene, between Nikolai & the Chechen's was good, the choreography at least but, with the blood, the way it looked, the way the Nikolai bled, it wasn't realistic. Such as the gash wound that he had going diagonally across his back, a person's blood doesn't coagulate that fast. He would have been bleeding heavily & bc of how it looked, besides the fact that it wasn't real, the blood alone looked like a scene from a bad horror movie; it was supposed to look real... And it did not!

Also, it would have made sense to have seen some sort of a conversation take place between Nikolai and Kirill and/or Semyon, once Nikolai was in the hospital after the fight scene. I could see Kirill ranting "We'll get them! We'll get them!! ... ", screaming about revenge & taking out all Chechen's everywhere & Semyon trying to calm him down, while that police supervisor watches them leave Nikolai's room thru security camera's from the security office...

The acting seems to range from quite good to excellent. I found the directing to be quite lacking, along with much of the story. Seeing Kirill flip out about killing the baby, Christine, made sense, since he probably realized that she is his (half) sister...

Subtitles would have been nice, since there was a lot of Russian being spoken, such as in the initiation scene where Nikolia is made a captain, a made-man, whatever/whichever. Even the accent's were so heavy it would have made more sense for the actor's to have spoken Russian & let the subtitles handle the audience's understanding of what is going on, as far as what is being said.

The end is good; it set's up the storyline for a sequel which I would like to see...but, only if they actually did justice to that storyline & that means making that movie a lot better than this one. If they do make a sequel I'd bet money that they will do it without the character Anna returning, which is a good thing! And if they did turn the Nikolai character into a Russian James Bond, I suspect that a lot of ppl wouldn't go for it. But, then again nobody ever said that moviegoer's were known for their common sense, either!