Stills from Eastern Promises (click for larger image). Photos by Peter Mountain.

Vincent Cassel (left) and Viggo Mortensen (right) star in David Cronenberg's EASTERN PROMISES, a Focus Features release.	Armin Mueller-Stahl (center) stars in David Cronenberg's EASTERN PROMISES, a Focus Features release.	Viggo Mortensen (left) and Naomi Watts (right) star in David Cronenberg?s EASTERN PROMISES, a Focus Features release.
Viggo Mortensen (left) and Naomi Watts (right) star in David Cronenberg?s EASTERN PROMISES, a Focus Features release.	Naomi Watts stars in David Cronenberg's new thriller EASTERN PROMISES, a Focus Features release.	Armin Mueller-Stahl (left) and Naomi Watt (right) star in David Cronenberg's EASTERN PROMISES, a Focus Features release.
Mina E. Mina (left), Vincent Cassel (center) and Viggo Mortensen (right) star in David Cronenberg's EASTERN PROMISES, a Focus Features release.	Vincent Cassel stars in David Cronenberg?s EASTERN PROMISES, a Focus Features release.	Viggo Mortensen stars in David Cronenberg?s EASTERN PROMISES, a Focus Features release.

Eastern Promises (Widescreen Edition)

• 3:10 to Yuma (Widescreen Edition)
• Michael Clayton (Widescreen Edition)
• American Gangster (2-Disc Unrated Extended Edition)
• The Kingdom (Widescreen Edition)
• The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
• No Country for Old Men
• The Brave One (Widescreen Edition)
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• Shoot 'Em Up
• There Will Be Blood

Here he gives us a monster, opening layer upon layer of cruelty and betrayal. When he seems drawn to Anna, we're never quite sure whether this will mean a degree of tenderness, or her death, or the death of the baby who has become a lever some would use against Semyon. "You must practice more," he tells them. He encourages his angels, his granddaughters, to learn the violin. In this case, it's the lead actor and there are no flopping bits that we don't see. Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl), the old man who owns the Trans-Siberian Restaurant, rules his criminal empire with guile and force. He's the man who survives, and he's a lot tougher, smarter, more resourceful and more violent than we may have thought.and that's saying something, since we've already watched him "process" a corpse for anonymous disposal.

She can barely speak English. He has daughters. He plays the violin. Even with that, Eastern Promises is a movie worth seeing and owning.

The bathhouse fight in Eastern Promises may be exploitive, but it's one of the most exciting, stunningly choreographed brawls I've seen on a screen. Mueller-Stahl just asking Anna with avuncular concern where she lives is able to raise the dread level with no effort at all. Kirill is a weakling who likes to beat people, a drunk, a man who breaks in the frightened girls by raping them on his father's orders and beats them when he can't perform. When she dies in a hospital her baby is saved and her diary is found. At one moment he embraces Nikolai as a brother, another he forces Nikolai into humiliating acts. Family is the only thing that counts, and even that becomes a repugnant concept. He is an aging man with white hair clipped short. More to the point, it tells us something about the kind of man Nikolai is.

And for a coup de grace, what could be more ick worthy than a blade driven into an eyeball, with the crunch of the socket bone being shattered. Another requirement would be that knives must be involved so that we can get plenty of blood, along with wince-inducing moments when blades slice into back and stomach muscles. Moving through this is Nikolai, slab-faced, pale, calm to the point of being unnerving. He has given us any number of wise old men to admire. It's short but interesting. Is it possible to take seriously a movie where the violent highlight is a vicious fight in a public bath.

The DVD has two extras. He brings in underage girls from Eastern Europe who think they'll be maids and waitresses, then imprisons them, hooks them on heroin, brutalizes and breaks them with rape and beatings, and puts them to work. We're going to learn more than we want about Kirill (Vincent Cassel), Semyon's son. He can be a friendly sort at times. "You must make the wood cry." Semyon spends much of his time running drugs and prostitution.

Eastern Promises is a fine movie, violent, complex and ugly. The fight requires, of course, that at least one of the male fighters be nude. Through it all I was engrossed, partly with the world of these tattooed, dangerous men, partly with the subtle way David Cronenberg fiddled with my reactions and assumptions, and partly with just how good the actors were. The DVD audio and picture are first-rate.

She's pregnant and hemorrhaging. And if you're of a certain age, you'll remind yourself to buy Cronenberg's Scanners (for your kids, of course) when you pick up Eastern Promises. Mortensen gave a stunning performance, down to his Russian-accented English, to his physicality and to the way he kept us off-balance with his intentions. The look of the film is just as tough and dark as the story. There is a twist that cannot be described, and which I wish hadn't happened.

One, Marked for Life, tells us about all those Russian thug tattoos. Eastern Promises is going to tell us about Anna (Naomi Watts), the nurse who helped deliver the baby and found the diary; about Semyon and the lengths he will go to protect himself, his power and his son; and about the driver, Nikolai, the man Semyon trusts as much as he would trust anyone.

He makes a wonderful pot of borscht. "I'm just the driver," Nikolai says.

One 14-year-old girl escapes. It involved removing the teeth and fingers using pliers and a snipper.

Viggo Mortensen plays Nikolai, the driver, as he calls himself, for the head of a powerful and vicious gang of Russian mafia based in London. We're deep in London's Russian mafia, where violent thugs have tattoos that tell each other the story of their crimes, their murders and their imprisonments.

Kirill grovels for his father's approval and beats others when he doesn't get it. Just as good was Armin Mueller-Stahl as Semyon.

If you want to see a much better movie about Russian mob life, try either "Brat" (Brother), "Brat II", or "Friend of the Deceased" (Ukrainian film). As it is, it's just dull and unrealistic. Most of the plot line is just totally unrealistic. Apart from Viggo Mortensen, this movie is a waste of time. If they had acted it just a bit more over the top, it would have been a fine dark comedy. The violence is graphic and lurid, but doesn't add much to theme or plot. I felt it was gratuitous. These three films have a lot more to say about life in the criminal trades, and just being human, than "Eastern Promises".

Brutal yet artful, subtle yet gripping, "Eastern Promises" packs dynamite in the story, acting, and directing departments. My widescreen DVD featured crisp, clear picture and sound. Two short but satisfying special features round out the DVD: a seven-or-eight minute piece that features the director and actors talking about the film, and a seven-or-eight minute piece about the history and role of the elaborate criminal tattoos featured in the film. Still, the movie isn't for squeamish viewers.

For most films, that's actually enough for me when it comes to special features. Cronenberg doesn't shy away from the brutality of mob violence, but he doesn't linger on it, either. Director David Cronenberg and his new favorite lead actor Viggo Mortensen (they previously teamed up to make "A History of Violence") return to tell a gripping story of the Russian mob in London, and how fate brings the mob into contact with an ordinary family who suddenly finds itself with the power to bring the mob hierarchy down. Mr.

It has all the elements one expects to see in this type of film, but also throws you a few curves, too. Combined, you get a good fifteen minutes or so of satisfying behind-the-scenes information. In you enjoy films in the organized crime genre, you'll probably like "Eastern Promises" a lot.

It's such a simple, nearly cliched, mob story. Not an uplifting tale, but a gritty tale that seems, as much as these things can to a random middle class American, realistic. But it's told here with a frankness and brutality that is something to behold. The tattoos are remarkable as is the look at a very different (Russian) mafia.

Or is he. Horror legend David Cronenberg (Rabid, Scanners, The Brood, Videodrome, etc).

Nikolai is a seemingly ice-cold killer without conscience. Mortensen plays Nikolai, a russian mobster w/ a lifetime's worth of lethal experience to go along w/ his body full of prison tattoos. PROMISES is packed w/ tension, horrific revelations, and a cast of iron-clad characters, including Vincent Cassel as the drunken, very dangerous Kirill, and Armin Mueller-Stahl as the quietly menacing Semyon.

teams up once more w/ A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE star Viggo Mortensen (The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, A Perfect Murder) to create the dark, underworld masterpiece, EASTERN PROMISES. Don't miss this one. Midwife, Anna (Naomi Watts from The Ring 1 and 2, King Kong) is plunged into the russian-mafia world after a young mother dies, leaving behind a newborn daughter and a mysterious diary.

Even the minor characters are well-written.