{"id":1872,"date":"2008-07-08T12:27:00","date_gmt":"2008-07-08T16:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=1872"},"modified":"2008-07-08T12:27:00","modified_gmt":"2008-07-08T16:27:00","slug":"eastern-promises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=1872","title":{"rendered":"Eastern Promises"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align: justify;\"><a onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http:\/\/bp1.blogger.com\/_aatuWUTj6ic\/SHOVf_9lqOI\/AAAAAAAABWM\/BsTYoeV77dQ\/s1600-h\/z070808eastern_prom.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"http:\/\/bp1.blogger.com\/_aatuWUTj6ic\/SHOVf_9lqOI\/AAAAAAAABWM\/BsTYoeV77dQ\/s400\/z070808eastern_prom.jpg\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220680770030774498\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><span style=\"font-family:arial;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">The Pitch: &#8220;The Godfather&#8221;<\/span> with a<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\"> Russian<\/span> twist.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:arial;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">The Good: Viggo Mortensen<\/span> owns every second he is own the screen.  <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Armin Mueller-Stahl <\/span>quietly demands to be watched and heard in every scene &#8212; which is exactly what is needed as the kind restaurant owner, family man and head of a <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Russian<\/span> mob.  The killings in the public bath &#8212; brutal, but believable.   The twist near the end &#8212; I totally did not see it coming and loved it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:arial;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">The Bad:<\/span> The movie is slow to get started and then moves at a steady pace.  The violence is there, but not as bad as you may have heard.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:arial;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">The Ugly:<\/span> \u201cOkay. Now I&#8217;m going to do his teeth and cut off his fingers. You might want to leave room.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:arial;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">The Summary: <a style=\"color: rgb(204, 0, 0);\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B000YENUI6\/002-4882510-2093642?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=zone_books-20&amp;linkCode=xm2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creativeASIN=B000YENUI6\">&#8220;Eastern Promises&#8221;<\/a><\/span> is a brutal look at the <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Russian<\/span> mafia.  <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Viggo Mortensen <\/span>gives an <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Oscar-worthy<\/span> performance as the \u201cdriver.\u201d  The violence may put some off, but it grounds the movie\u2019s reality.  I have a feeling that this one is going to grow on me as time passes.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Pitch: &#8220;The Godfather&#8221; with a Russian twist. The Good: Viggo Mortensen owns every second he is own the screen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[51,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-movies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1872\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}