“They went all out,” Spencer said, in an interview back in 2008. When asked in an interview about the difference between " gun violence " and "knife violence," Cronenberg replied, "We have no guns in this movie. A professional stuntman for nearly 30 years, Julian Spencer was tasked with coming up with the choreography for the now-famous scene. Ballsy. This time we also get a surrogate on the inside, mob enforcer Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen), who literally carries a history of violence on his back. Crime thriller taking place in modern London: A midwife (Naomi Watts) helps deliver a baby by a 14-year-old Russian girl who dies, and she soon discovers through the girl's diary that she was forced into sexual slavery by a Russian organized crime family. Continuity mistake: When Nikolai and Semyon are drinking vodka during the diary exchange, Semyon empties his glass, but when he puts it back on the table it is full. Eastern Promises had the sauna fight, a scene so unforgettable that legendary film critic Roger Ebert once said it “sets the same kind of standard [for fight scenes] that The French Connection set for chases. It bears repeating: one of the most intense, unrelenting and vulnerable action scenes of all time is performed by Mortensen with his dick entirely out for over three minutes. Alex. SBS acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia. Viggo Mortensen can, and few who have seen Eastern Promises could argue that he didn’t deserve it. More for Eastern Promises. David Cronenberg’s 2007 Russian mafia thriller came off the back of a swell of critical and commercial support for A History Of Violence, released just two years earlier. They were the most realistic fight scenes I have ever seen. SBS World Movies Weekly Highlights: 25 - 31 January, SBS World Movies Weekly Highlights: 18 - 24 January, SBS World Movies – January Summer of Discovery Weekends, Explore the Summer of Discovery on SBS World Movies, The most watched movies of 2020 now streaming at SBS On Demand. Even though the Lord Of The Rings star was promoting Captain Fantastic – for which, coincidentally, he also received an Oscar nomination and did full-frontal nudity – O’Brien had to ask about that scene from a decade ago. Eastern Promises was the continuation of a broad idea at the centre of A History of Violence: a man and a situation that is not what it initially seems. “It’s David Cronenberg, so you kind of do whatever he says,” said Mortensen in an interview with Conan O’Brien from earlier this year. 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. ... More quotes from Eastern Promises. Semyon hatches a plan to trick Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen) into taking Kirill's (Vincent Cassel) place during a meeting at the baths with Azim. Eastern Promises' is available to stream at SBS On Demand. NOT for the faint of heart. Looking to watch Eastern Promises? Yet there’s nudity, and then there’s Eastern Promises nudity. Mortensen is nude in a dramatic fight scene that has become the talk of his fans and movie Web sites. Because in a career that has spanned Middle Earth to Apocalyptic futures, everyone always wants to know about that scene. EASTERN PROMISES is a late-period offering from David Cronenberg and while it only touches on his body fixation, the story is thoroughly engrossing and backed up by some excellent performances. View this video on … The two assailants – both dressed head-to-toe in black leather, one standing at 6.5ft – search for Nikolai in the bathhouse as the movie enters its final third. The movie opened Friday. Sure, he had worked on James Bond movies and Braveheart, but he had never coordinated a fight scene where one of the players is completely naked. John McClane or Rambo might take 20 hits and keep moving, but it’s Nikolai’s vulnerability – and Mortensen's willingness to play ball – that make Eastern Promises’ sauna fight scene truly iconic. His nude fight scene in a steam room was applauded by Roger Ebert: "Years from now, it will be referred to as a benchmark." Scroll down for link. Eastern Promises’ fight scene does not stand out for skill or technical efficiency but because it is not afraid to show the damage done to the human body. Years from now, it will be referred to as a benchmark." Literally. X Join the mailing list. The film stars Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts, Vincent Cassel, Sinéad Cusack, and Armin Mueller-Stahl. Eastern Promises (2007) Parents Guide Add to guide . A decade has passed since the always-provocative director David Cronenberg shocked audiences with one of cinema's greatest and most nakedly vulnerable fight scenes. For the bathhouse fight scene, the scene was choreographed with the actors instead of stuntmen. Within the first few seconds of the scene, Mortensen’s towel falls off as he proceeds to fight against two armed attackers with his dick out and swinging. In Knight’s original script, the scene is barely more than two paragraphs and was written to have been much shorter and much less dramatic than what ends up on screen. While other action films focus on the impenetrability of their heroes, Cronenberg did what he has often done, and pulled a U-turn when it came to audience expectations. The actors had to train in specific fighting styles chosen for their characters and it took two days to shoot on location in London. Amazon.com: Eastern Promises [Blu-ray]: Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts, Vincent Cassel, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Sinead Cusack, Jerzy Skolimowski, David Cronenberg, Paul Webster, ... making it a character-building moment as well as a thrilling fight scene. They identify him thanks to his tattoos; marks of his position and power within the Russian crime syndicate he works for. Eastern Promises movie clips: http://j.mp/1uuVxb7BUY THE MOVIE: http://amzn.to/tjndXvDon't miss the HOTTEST NEW TRAILERS: … Eastern Promises has plenty of those, from a Russian mobster's throat being sawed open by a feeble-minded teenager to Viggo Mortensen's impromptu nudity in a harrowing bath-house scuffle. Graphic throat slashings, a brutal knife fight scene, and Tatiana's story in particular all make for a very disturbing movie. Part mystery, part crime drama, part thriller, it unfolded beautifully thanks to the convincing performances of its cast in Mortensen, Naomi Watts and Vincent Cassel. The fight scene in the sauna is among the most violent scenes ever in a non-horror film. Find out where Eastern Promises is streaming, if Eastern Promises is on Netflix, and get news and updates, on Decider. Right up there with Raging Bull only even better.%0D %0D I loved the Errol Flynn swordfighting!%0D %0D Got to give a nod to Viggo in Eastern Promises, too.%0D %0D %0D Mortensen's latest movie is the David Cronenberg-directed "Eastern Promises" (in theaters September 14), and his turn as a Russian mob man in the thriller has many talking Oscar. Lots of tongues wagging this week about how Viggo Mortensen‘s naked knife fight in Eastern Promises heralds a new era of male full … Alien had its chest burster over the dinner table, Up had its heartbreaking opening montage and Jaws… well, lets just say kids in the 1970s avoided floatable lilos for a reason. The 2007 film followed a Russian-British midwife, Anna (Watts), hunting for the truth after a pregnant teen whose child she delivered dies in childbirth, and has possible … Heck, odds are you’ve met a ‘swinging dick’ in your time. In September 2007, the film Eastern Promises, directed by David Cronenberg, was released to critical acclaim for the film itself and for Mortensen's performance as a Russian gangster on the rise in London. Mortensen, for his part, has never held back when it comes to nudity on screen. Eastern Promises fight scene in the Turkish baths - YouTube The specifics of the plot aren’t needed to break down this particular cinematic moment, and in fact it’s almost better if you don’t know them. What Eastern Promises deals in is humanity and how it is a senseless, jolting dance at times and a ballet at others. The final scene implies that Nikolai is now in charge of the family. The Chechens attack, thinking Nikolai is Kirill, but Nikolai kills them both, ending up in the hospital with severe wounds.Eastern Promises is a 2007 gangster film directed by David Cronenberg, from a screenplay written by Steven Knight. re: The bath house fight in Eastern Promises Posted by bricksandstones on 9/10/18 at 2:54 pm to Muthsera Watched this one this weekend and really liked … While she tries to find out more about the girl, she meets the Russian-born (Viggo Mortensen) driver for the crime family, who … Thus, it contains some brutal scenes of violence, strong foul language and strong sexual content. Eastern Promises had the sauna fight, a scene so unforgettable that legendary film critic Roger Ebert once said it “sets the same kind of standard [for fight scenes] that The French Connection set for chases. Eastern Promises 2 is reportedly on the way after spending years in development limbo. We’ve all heard the phrase ‘swinging dick’, a term usually used to describe a male’s presence when he is trying to directly imply or outwardly flex his power. Viggo Mortensen, the actor who became a household name after he played kingly, sword-wielding Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, is generating buzz again - this time for what he's not wearing in Eastern Promises. Mistakes. 23. It would be the first of three collaborations between the veteran filmmaker and Mortensen, and an uncharacteristically normal movie for someone who once made Naked Lunch and Videodrome. David Cronenberg's "Eastern Promises" opens with a throat-slashing and a young woman collapsing in blood in a drugstore, and connects these events with a descent into an underground of Russians who have immigrated to London and brought their crime family with them. ... making it a character-building moment as well as a thrilling fight scene. Eastern Promises was directed by David Cronenberg and starred Viggo Mortensen and Naomi Watts. Flesh is shanked, eyes are gouged, limbs are broken, all while Mortensen’s Aragon is left swinging in the wind. Two Chechen hitmen arrive in London seeking vengeance and kill Azim's mentally handicapped nephew, who also took part in the hit. Made cooler when you realize the movie was cast by Nina Gold, the same woman who cast Game of Thrones. EASTERN PROMISES is a powerful thriller with some uplifting moral qualities, but it is R-rated. Years from now, it will be referred to as a benchmark." Two Chechen hitmen arrive in London seeking vengeance and kill Azim's mentally handicapped nephew, who also took part in the hit. “All I was wearing was a bunch of tattoos,” the actor told The Telegraph back in 2007 after the film had premiered to a stir at the Toronto International Film Festival. Fast-forward 10 years later and, as per usual, Ebert was right. There is also a brutal knife fight where a completely nude Nikolai must fight off two big knife-wielding assailants. While a majority of Eastern Promises’ locations were real places repurposed for the production’s needs, a set was built specifically for the bathhouse scene and based on London’s Ironmonder Row Baths, which were first opened in the 1930s. All of the great movies have them; a scene that’s instantly unforgettable and leaps out at a viewer as the one that is discussed around the water cooler when talking about the film. Like the Corleone family, but with a less wise and more fearsome patriarch, the Vory V … All you need to know is this: two Chechen gangsters enter a Turkish bathhouse to take out a mobster they mistakenly think is Mortensen’s character, Nikolai. He’s dropped his pants more than once but it’s his brutal nude bath-house fight scene in David Cronenberg’s “Eastern Promises” that gets most of … Like that story, Eastern Promises centers on an innocent, the half-Russian hospital midwife Anna (Naomi Watts), through whose eyes we are introduced to the squalid mise en scène. Originally intending to be shot over six days, the scene was cut down to a two day shooting schedule. The idea of having your hero fight two knife-wielding killers naked is a hard sell but both Cronenberg and Mortenson carry it off perfectly. Here are just a few of the fight scenes that would like to thank the Academy: Also, ... Eastern Promises (2007) — The Sauna. With Naomi Watts, Viggo Mortensen, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Josef Altin. Each man carries a linoleum cutter, something Cronenberg had decided they would use as weapons (if stopped in the street, the men would have a plausible excuse for carrying them). Edit Fast-forward 10 years later and, as per usual, Ebert was right. Viggo Mortensen, the dashing Aragorn in 'Lord of the Rings', has filmed the most talked-about fight scene of the decade in his latest film, David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises. And although the film works beautifully as a succinct whole, there’s one scene that has lived on in cinematic legend: the sauna fight scene. Russell Crowe's last big boxing match scenes in Cinderella Man. With minimal editing, there’s little room to hide anything, which makes it both a brave performance for Mortensen as an actor but also as an athlete, with protection pads ruled out early in rehearsal as they would show up on camera. But how many people can say that being one, having one even, landed them an Oscar nomination? When it came to filming it, however, that’s when the magic happened. Unsuspecting and dressed in nothing more than a towel, Nikolai is forced to fight for his life across bathroom tiles slick with moisture, sweat and (soon) blood. Viggo Mortensen's nude moment in Eastern Promises is actually part of an extremely prolonged four-minute fight scene that takes place in a Turkish bath. Retroactive Recognition: Maester Luwin and Pyp. A Russian teenager living in London who dies during childbirth leaves clues to a midwife in her journal that could tie her child to a rape involving a violent Russian mob family. “I knew that it was going to end up being a bloody mess. Directed by David Cronenberg. It’s the kind of movie nudity that ten years later has an entire active Reddit thread dedicated specifically to it. British screenwriter Steven Knight did what he does better than almost anyone else in the business, and that was craft an intricate, authentic and complex world of crime (see also: Peaky Blinders, Taboo, Dirty Pretty Things and Locke). 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