Warning: This movie reviews might or might not contain spoilers. Read it at your own risk.

Eastern Promises is the new David Cronenberg movie. You might remember him from other movie he directed such as History of Violence and the classic 1986′s The Fly.

Eastern Promises has completely changed the way I think about the Russian mafia. They made the Italian mafia look like a social club. No doubt, this movie could just become this generation’s ‘Godfather‘.

Stars Naomi Watts as Anna Khitrova a midwife in a London hospital, discovers a baby who’s mother, Tatiana a fourteen-year-old teen, died during childbirth. She left her Russian language diary and a card for a Russian restaurant owned by Semyon, played by Armin Mueller-Stahl, which happens to be a boss in the Russian Mafia.

Intrigue in wanting to know more about the origins of the baby, Anna the midwife, was then let down to the path of the extremely dark and dangerous world of Russian mafia.

She then cross path with the Russian-born Nikolai Luzhin, played by Viggo Mortensen, who serves as the family’s ‘cleaner’, processing dead bodies and dumping them in the River Thames. He is also the driver and right-hand-man for Semyon’s son Kirill, played by Vincent Cassel.

The film has a few shocking plot twist. You don’t really know who is the bad guy until it all unwraps in the end. The film also has been notes for its violence and realistic depiction of the Russian criminal underworld, including its user of tattoos.

David Cronenberg did a good job in combining the extremely dark world of the criminal underworld with the very ordinary everyday life. Two totally different worlds.

Viggo Mortensen did an amazing performance, I think his Russian dialect is pretty believable. He is terrifying in this film. Although he is very calm all the time, but he gives out the “I can kill you at any moment” vibe. It’s as if deep down he knows he is a better man then you and he could take you down anytime if he wish too.

You can’t write about this movie without mentioning Viggo Mortensen’s bath house fight scene. Nikolai found himself in some old school bath house defending against a couple of badass. Towels when off and it’s one of the brutal realistic nude fight scene. Kudos for Viggo for wanting to do the scene in complete nude, because if the towel were to some how magically stayed on all the time during the fight it’s pretty unbelievable. This is not a Steven Seagal movie.

Semyon restaurant owner moonlighting as Russian mafia boss is equally terrifying. He’s portray of a caring grandfather-like way yet subtly spooky to Anna is scary in a way. There is a scene where he was talking to Anna, “I’ll drop this off for you, where do you stay?”.

Overall the movie feels violence but not that much actual violence was going on. It’s just the way the story was told makes you feel that this is a violent movie. A must see movie.