Joe Lipsett Anatomy of a Scream Podcast Network Jan 2, 2025 3.5/5

Viggo's second collaboration with Cronenberg doesn't have the same juice as A History of Violence and the story would have benefitted from exploring the Krill character more, but the naked bath fight is a keeper!

Go to Full Review

Stephen Silver Tilt Magazine Sep 19, 2022 4/5

Represented one of Cronenberg’s stronger periods, one with more mainstream success than the director has typically enjoyed. (15th anniversary)

Go to Full Review

Fico Cangiano CineXpress Podcast May 18, 2022 4/5

Viggo Mortensen gives a fascinating performance in this dark and violent journey full of secrets, fidelity and family. [Full review in Spanish]

Go to Full Review

Derek Smith Slant Magazine Apr 25, 2022

The extras are all but perfunctory, but Kinos exquisite 4K transfer is easily the best that Eastern Promises has looked on home video to date.

Go to Full Review

Brian Eggert Deep Focus Review Apr 4, 2022 4/4

Beyond the film's eroticized violence and secretive world among the brutal Russian gangsters, Cronenberg also tells an immigrant story about people who want a better life only to find their desire exploited.

Go to Full Review

Matt Brunson Film Frenzy Apr 1, 2022 3/4

Full of whispery menace, marked by probing studies of masculinity at its extreme boundaries, punctuated with bursts of sexual and violent excess, and coping with an abrupt ending.

Go to Full Review

Mike Massie Gone With The Twins Nov 24, 2020 8/10

The dark and brooding world of the Russian Mafia makes for thrilling movie material - and the jumping point for a contemporary gangster epic.

Go to Full Review

Ellie Lucas The Dispatch (Lexington, NC) Jun 5, 2019 3.5/4

An intricate and mesmerizing thriller, featuring stellar performances (especially by Mortensen, who gives the bravest performance of his career) and an excellent script by Steven Knight

Go to Full Review

Dan Sallitt Senses of Cinema Oct 12, 2018

Despite the problems with the characterisations, Cronenberg's portentous, withholding camera creates a compelling tension around Watts and Mortensen's love/hate scenes.

Go to Full Review

Deborah Ross The Spectator Aug 23, 2018

Such are the actual subtleties of Mortensen's performance - the odd sardonic smile; the slight tightening of a look - you're aware, from the off, that what he is on the outside might not have anything to do with what he is on the inside.

Go to Full Review

Robert Koehler Cinema Scope Oct 2, 2017

Eastern Promises is a fascinating case of a film made under the intense gaze of a supreme auteur and written by the separate but equally potent hand of a writer.

Go to Full Review

Mark Asch Stop Smiling Aug 24, 2017

Knight throws in a twist that scrambles the movie's moral compass so late in the game, so perfunctorily and so pointlessly, as to render any final reckoning incoherent.

Go to Full Review

Ben Rawson-Jones Digital Spy Jul 14, 2011 5/5

Quite possibly the best film of the year, it is to be seen at all costs.

Go to Full Review

Nick Rogers Midwest Film Journal Sep 25, 2010 4/4

David Cronenberg's spin on "The Departed," in which lawmen and the lawless were similarly tested within an ethnic mafia's ranks. But where that became an overwrought bloodbath, "Promises" maintained a vicious focus on mob malevolence and personal peril.

Go to Full Review

Jason Gorber Filmfest Sep 2, 2010 A-

"It starts very well, and we're immediately drawn into this world of dead pregnant teens, the Russian mob, the hermeneutics of tattoos and the archetypal disappointment of a father with his son."

Go to Full Review

Ian Buckwalter DCist Jun 10, 2010 8.5/10

Clearly a companion piece to (and just as good as, if not better than) 2005's fantastic A History of Violence, Eastern Promises is all about blood, in the familial as well as the literal sense.

Go to Full Review

Mike Scott Times-Picayune Oct 23, 2009 2.5/4

Even if the frequently low-key plot suffers from the occasional sleepy stretch, Mortensen turns in a magnificent performance.

Go to Full Review

Fernando F. Croce CinePassion Aug 27, 2009

Late-period Cronenberg masterpiece

Go to Full Review

Jeff Vice Deseret News (Salt Lake City) Oct 18, 2008 3/4

Mortensen is very convincing as Nikolai, and his Russian accent is impeccable.

Go to Full Review

Enrique Buchichio Uruguay Total May 3, 2008 4/5

Un ejemplo de cine negro contemporáneo realizado y narrado con gran precisión. Excelente elenco donde se destaca la notable labor de Viggo Mortensen.

Go to Full Review