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Spoiler Points for Eastern Promises (2007) [R] 100 minutes
WIP™ Scale: $13.00
Film's Official Website • Film's Trailer
Click to read the non-spoiler review
The Big Secret:
Well the big secret, that's not that hard to want to figure out. Your brain, if it's slightly romantically inclined, will want Viggio Mortensen's character, Nikolai, to be a good guy somehow, so it will figure out that the only way this could be is if he's actually an undercover agent for the Russians. And, guess what? Your brain would be correct. He is. He's even more deeply undercover than Leonardo DiCaprio's character was in The Departed. He even earns his star tattoos (right and left chest above the heart and on his knees to signal that he will never again kneel before anyone), the symbol the vory v zakone.
So, as it happens, he did not assassinate Naomi's uncle, rather he sent him to Scotland. His bad guy persona is just a character he's created to infiltrate and bring down the organization. When he reads the diary, it makes him sick to his stomach, and he knows that he must destroy Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl), the big boss, and fast.
He sends a message to his Scotland Yard contacts via the tattoos etc. on the dead guy that Kiriil has had killed and he gets to clean up--a brilliant way of checking in without arousing suspicion.
The Ending
After he survives being attacked by the Chechens in his rousing naked kick boxing standoff, he is hospitalized. There he meets with his contact at the Scotland Yard and tells him that he must arrest the big guy on charges of statutory rape—he has the child all he needs is a DNA match from the big guy's blood. When they take Semyon's blood, Kirill realizes that the must get the baby (he learns about the baby from Anna who says that the Semyon is the father) from the police so they won't be able to make the connection to the baby. When Anna spots Kirill in the hospital, she runs, but she's too late, he's snared the baby and replaced it with a bouquet of roses. She goes to find Viggio and the two speed off on her motorcycle. Nikolai knows that Kirill will take the baby to the same place as where he dumped Kirill's victim. They find him there, horrified at what he's about to do—toss his baby sister into the river to drown in the current. He's tormented. Nikolai talks him off the ledge, so to speak, by indicating that his father has gone to far, and it's time for Kirill to take over the organization. Kirill is amazed to see his partner alive and well. He says he did not know that his father set up the exchange of places sending him to the meeting with the Chechens knowing they would think Nikolai was his son and kill him ending the vendetta. The two give the baby to Anna and have the most sensuous encounter of the film just shy of the kiss Kirill so obviously wants. But, for Nikolai it is all an act, part of his role, he lip locks with Anna as Kirill is up the alley intending to party on New Year's Eve. He comes back for Nikolai. We next see the baby, Christina, adopted into Anna's family and Nikolai in charge of the restaurant where Semyon once sat.
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