Canadian director David Cronenberg has often been considered a "bad boy" of film. His movies have dealt with macabre subjects in macabre ways, and have developed a steady and loyal cult following. In his most recent films, however, especially A History of Violence (2005), Cronenberg has taken a turn toward the mainstream. That film’s star, Viggo Mortensen, must have pleased the director, because he’s returned to take top billing in Eastern Promises.

The plot is a bit complicated, or told in such a way as to seem so. Anna (Naomi Watts), a midwife in a London hospital, assists a young mother who dies in childbirth. The child survives, and in trying to use the mother’s diary to find the child’s family, Anna is led to the Russian mafia, led by restaurateur Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl). Semyon is nice to Anna, but it soon becomes clear that this is only because he wants the diary. He has a schizoid son, Kirill (Vincent Cassel), and a driver, Nikolai (Mortensen), called "the undertaker," who silences loose lips.

And so the two plots are set: Anna’s obsession to find the baby’s family, and a power struggle within the Russian mob. The diary contains information that links the two, telegraphing discovery long before it happens.

Mortensen is magnificent as Nikolai. His Russian accent seems a bit fake at first, then entirely in character, a bit vacant and as artificial as this conflicted character. Nikolai is enigmatic because he does not know who he really is, and Mortensen effectively conveys this.

None of this sounds much like a Cronenberg film, but in some scenes the director’s touch is firmly felt. In a horrific scene at the beginning, when a customer in a barber’s chair has his throat slit, the death blow is not a single neat slice, but a slash followed by extended sawing. Later, in an intense battle in a steam bath, the naked Nikolai is pitted against two thugs in black with very sinister-looking blades. To many, this will probably be the most memorable scene in the film. There’s one more slit throat, but most of Eastern Promises comprises talk and medium to close-up one-shots of actors acting, without much motion, the lines in the script. In contrast to the action scenes, these segments sometimes seem too calm, even banal.

Cinematographer Peter Suschitzky has shot the film to feel claustrophobic. I’ve a hunch that, for this reason, it might be even more effective in a home theater than at the cineplex. I saw it in a stadium-seating theater in which there was no choice but have the screen in my face; the action, especially the bathhouse fight, looked great, but the quieter scenes seemed wrong for the large screen. Howard Shore has long written scores for Cronenberg; this one is effective in its sparse simplicity, the very opposite of his grand music for The Lord of the Rings.

Perhaps I’ve been a bit harsh in judgment, but A History of Violence was a very good film and a hard act to follow. Eastern Promises is more of an interlude.

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