Eastern Promises, directed by David Cronenberg is a thriller movie starring Viggo Mortenson, Naomi Watt, Vincent Cassel. The story line of the movie is about how a mid-wife gets evidence of a Russian mob Boss’s involvement in a child rape.

Any other filmmaker other than David Cronenberg would have given up the mood and the effect for the sake of pushing in pace into the narrative and wrapped it up clean with a ribbon on top, considering that this is a thriller. The director creates the tension slowly and shrilly, before unleashing effective streaks of extreme raw violence with absolute no regard for political correctness.

Here, the story involves the life of a baby that is only a few days old. The baby’s mother was a 14 year old rape victim. When the mid-wife (Naomi Watts) finds the diary of the mother after her death, she finds secrets that could get her and her family killed. Cronenberg is capable of showing us a baby hacked into tiny pieces and all through the film.  The performances by Viggo Mortenson, Vincent Cassel, Naomi Watts and Armin Mueller Stahl as the mob boss Semyon are simply extraordinary.

Mortenson plays the role of the mob boss’s good-heart loyal driver but when you work for the mob, you can’t have both goodness and loyalty. Right from his Russian accent to body language or even when he’s not talking or doing anything, Mortenson seeks your attention with sheer presence, deserving every bit of that Oscar nomination.

Those familiar with Cronenberg, would throughly enjoy this auteur’s exploration of violence by investigating on the physicality of the act of violence and the psychology of those who unleash it.