Eastern Promises has an Oscar nomination for best leading actor with Viggo Mortenson playing the character Nikolai. In the past few weeks I have been hearing some buzz about this particular flick so I had to check it out. Hoping, like a few of my past reviews, that Eastern Promises would be a surprisingly good movie to me.

The movie is set in Russia and involves what seems to be a Russian gang or mob family of some sort. It also involves a mid wife named Anna, played by Naomi Watts. Anna happened to be a mid wife for a young prostitute who ended up dying while giving birth. Usually the nurses take the unclaimed items from a deceased person, so Anna ended up getting the diary of this young girl.

Viggo Mortensen plays the character of Nikolai, a driver who is up and coming in this gang. Always accompanied by the leader's son, Kirill. (Vincent Cassel) Nikolai is a stone cold killer with no feelings at all, but at the same time a very smart gentleman. He begins to unravel the story that involves the leader of the gang, Stepan, and what he has to do with the dead prostitute and her diary.

Stepan finds out that the diary can be fatal and tries anything to get it before the police do. Nikolai is put to the test to retrieve it and dispose of the people in the way. All through out Nikolai's ritual of entering the gamg and befriending the leader, does anyone know about his secret which adds a much needed twist into this story.

I said much need twist, because this movie was dull and boring. This was a surprise becuase this movie wasn't even that decent, it never seemed to get anywhere and because of that I disliked this movie a lot. I can see why Viggo is nominated for best actor. His performance as Nikolai is really nice, the speaking of Russian and coming off as ruthless man is really done well. Over all this movie was disappointing and way to slow.

6/10