I watched a motion picture on HD DVD this afternoon.
It is called "Eastern Promises", directed by David Cronenberg.
This movie is a tale of Russian mafia in London and two people who get caught up in it when a young girl dies in childbirth and leaves behind a diary that tells how she was raped by a prominent Russian mafioso. Viggo Mortensen stars as a truly rough, unpleasant man who works for a buisnessman (Armin Mueller-Stahl). Viggo is also intriguing and sexy in a brutish sort of way and, naturally, attracts the young midwife, played by Naomi Watts, who delivered the dead girl's baby and found the diary and learns who sired the baby from it. Meanwhile, the son of the businessman, played by Vincent Cassel, becomes the key to many unpleasant things that have happened and will happen.
There is much blood and visual gore in some scenes. There is also a bathhouse scene where Viggo must fight two men who have mistaken him for his boss' son...and Viggo does this in the nude with "little Viggo and his pals" showing him up a few times. Anyone watches this and says he or she never looked at/saw little Viggo, he or she will be lying.
Everyone is first-rate in the film, IMO, and it's extraordinarily sharp in high definition.
This was a good movie. It doesn't have a wasted moment. The score by Howard Shore is a major asset.
