"Eastern Promises" tells the story of one Ana Ivanovna, a midwife at a London hospital who gets involved with the Russian mafia. It quite surprised me with its quality; later I learned that it is apparently a cult film. It's rather detailed and tells a lot in its runtime of 100 minutes.

The cast is absolutely incredible. Viggo Mortensen and Vincent Cassel are the biggest stars here, and have a great chemistry to boot. Viggo really sells the mystery and charisma of his character Nikolai Luzhin, while Cassel is great at displaying the insecurities of Kirill. Clearly, a lot of effort went into donning Russian flavour to their speech, and from what I have been able to gather, the results are actually quite decent. For them and many others here. Armin Mueller-Stahl stands out as well, posing a facade of a good person, beneath which lies much darkness.

The story deals with some pretty heavy themes and director David Cronenberg does not shy away from the brutality of the world he is depicting. I winced a couple times, as this is far from an action movie; every time harm comes to a character, it makes an impact. The subject matter's hardship does not end there; power, sex, human trafficking, drugs, and many more themes serve to paint the rotten underground beneath the elegance of London. There's a style to the film that always remains, it never loses its tone in spite of the realities that occur. There a fictional stroke to the movie, almost romantic, Godfather-esque.

The cinematography was beautiful, and I think it managed to infuse Western filmmaking with some Russian sensibilities. This goes for the overall tone of the film - characters and plot. I would say that it is leagues better than most Russian representation you see in popular media.

"Eastern Promises" is a film I would genuinely recommend to those looking for a good crime drama film. It treads away from stereotypes with tact, and tells a story that is engrossing and gives good room to humanity along the way. It's not for the faint of heart, so just keep that in mind before watching it. A great movie, doing well at setting its identity.