Finally got round to watching David Cronenberg's film about the Russian Mafia in London, Eastern Promises. I'd been put off by the slight naffness of the title, but the film is, in fact, fascinating. Viggo Mortensen gives a brilliant, and very physical, performance, as a gangster whose body is covered in the traditional tattoos of the Russian Mafia, but who retains an independent spirit. Playing what must be the most attractive motorbike-riding midwife that London has ever seen, Naomi Watts is solid and sympathetic. She is drawn into the Mafia underworld when she attempts to trace the family of an orphaned baby whose mother died on her ward. The plot has been criticised for being far fetched, but that somehow feels like the wrong way to approach the film. The mix of menace and beauty, combined with the director's characteristic obsession with the body, makes Eastern Promises both feel very accessible (unless you are in any way squeamish) and also characteristically Cronenberg.
