Washington Post by Desson Thomson

Cronenberg's deeper purpose is to pull audiences into an affecting, powerful story about right and wrong.

Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert

The actors and the characters merge and form a reality above and apart from the story, and the result is a film that takes us beyond crime and London and the Russian mafia and into the mystifying realms of human nature.

Premiere by Glenn Kenny

One of Cronenberg's subtlest, most insinuating pictures, and one of the highlights of the year so far.

Portland Oregonian by Shawn Levy

Cronenberg has, as Guillermo del Toro did in "Pan's Labyrinth," crafted both a drama and a fairy tale -- and he's done it in an entertainment as cracking as you could wish for.

The Hollywood Reporter

Cronenberg and screenwriter Steve Knight masterfully orchestrate an atmosphere of danger and dread for a descent into an underworld inhabited by the Russian mafia in London.

Salon by Andrew O'Hehir

A dark and mesmerizing immersion into a distinctive world.

Village Voice by J. Hoberman

A rhapsodic movie directed with considerable formal intelligence and brooding power from an original screenplay by Steve Knight, Eastern Promises is very much a companion to "A History of Violence."

Variety by Todd McCarthy

A superbly wrought yarn set in the milieu of first-generation Russian mobsters in London that is simultaneously tough-minded and compassionate about the human condition, Eastern Promises instantly takes its place among David Cronenberg's very best films.

The Hollywood Reporter by Sura Wood

Cronenberg and screenwriter Steve Knight masterfully orchestrate an atmosphere of danger and dread for a descent into an underworld inhabited by the Russian mafia in London.

Slate by Dana Stevens

David Cronenberg's elegant treatise on the metaphysics of violence.

Wall Street Journal by Joe Morgenstern

Viggo Mortensen's performance is flat-out brilliant, and this relentlessly dramatic thriller represents a mid-life growth spurt for its director, David Cronenberg.

Chicago Tribune by Michael Phillips

An unusually strong crime thriller, Eastern Promises comes from director David Cronenberg, a meticulous old-school craftsman of a type that is becoming increasingly rare.

Rolling Stone by Peter Travers

In Eastern Promises, shot to envelop by the great Peter Suschitzky, Cronenberg brings us face to face with the horror of self.

Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman

It's an academic meditation in underworld-thriller drag -- a movie that looks about as close to a straight-ahead, down-and-dirty genre entertainment as anything the director has made since his exploding-head horror days.

The New Yorker by Anthony Lane

Cronenberg made a movie called “The Dead Zone,” and I sometimes wonder whether, for all his formal brilliance, he has ever torn himself away from that locked-in, airless state of mind. You walk out of Eastern Promises feeling spooked and sullied, as if waking from a noisome dream.

New York Magazine (Vulture) by David Edelstein

It’s engrossing, and Mueller-Stahl’s mix of Old World chivalry and murderousness is scarier than Jason and Freddy combined.

ReelViews by James Berardinelli

Eastern Promises is a jumbled string of mob-related clichés that mesh into something that’s derivative and at times uninteresting.