Eastern Promises

Because Allison wasn't feeling that well, and because she had a whole bunch of schoolwork to do, including shooting the diorama that's taken up residence in our living room, we decided to skip-out on traditional Valentine's Day events and do our own thing at home. I did some reading for school, ate dinner by myself, read a bit more of Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" (which I've never read. Shame, I know) and watched David Cronenberg's "Eastern Promises."

I'm not going to go into movie-reviewer mode, because, well, I'm not in the mood for that right now. Something about my attention span at the moment. However, I do want to express how much I enjoyed this movie starring Viggo Mortenson as a member of the Russian mob, which examines his interactions with his employers, a restaurant owner and his son, as he tries to work his way into a bona-fide position with the mob. Tied into this, is a story of an underage Russian girl who collapses upon the floor of a pharmacy, is taken into a hospital, has her baby girl removed by caesarean, and then dies.

The story of this baby, her origins (both matrilineal and patrilineal), and her fate conspire to throw a wrench into the workings of the mob as it tries to protect its own and secure for itself power in modern-day England. There's a lot going on in this movie, including a pretty unbelievable fight scene (NSFW, of course).

But yeah, I'm just a fan of this as I am of Cronenberg's other movies.