It’s taken director David Cronenberg a long time to gain respect for some odd reason. The marketing people on his new film ‘Eastern Promises’ are able to call him an “acclaimed director” right there at the top of the movie poster, and this sudden acclaim is long past due in my opinion. This is the guy that, from film to film, is able to unnerve and provoke both cerebrally and viscerally. Usually he deals with the same tones and subtexts, and ‘Eastern Promises’ is similar to his past works in that respect. That ‘Promises’ is no less uncompromising than his past works should make most Cronenberg fans happy.

As for the rest of you: go away. If you’re not a fan of the man, then why are you reading movie reviews? Sit at home and watch Reese Witherspoon’s ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ again and shut up. For those of you that are still with me, but still need a little backup on the man, David Cronenberg is a Canadian-born genius and eccentric kind of director (and sometimes writer) whose filmic vision has been a sustained theme of social orders, body horrors, and identity traumas, and how all three of these things can intertwine, lead to problems, and even cause certain madnesses and maladies. He was the first man to show an exploding head on film in his 1981 ‘Scanners’.

He predicted reality TV and virtual reality (and all of the troubles that come with both) in his 1983 ‘Videodrome’ with James Woods. He combined Christopher Walken and Stephen King in 1983’s ‘The Dead Zone’. He made Jeff Goldblum a sympathetic (and very disgusting) monster in his 1986 remake of ‘The Fly’. He turned Jeremy Irons into the creepiest pair of twin gynecologists ever in ‘Dead Ringers’(1988). He filmed William S. Burroughs unfilmable novel ‘Naked Lunch’ in 1991. He made an excellent and – yes, very strange and disconcerting – movie about the sexual arousal that can accompany automobile accidents in ‘Crash’(1996). He made a better version of ‘The Matrix’ the same year ‘The Matrix’ came out (1999) with ‘eXistenZ’. And, of course, he gained some critical accolades in 2005 with ‘A History of Violence’.

So, for those of you taking count, he hasn’t made too many bad flicks. I left a few out here and there, but the ones listed above are some of my faves, though I’ve still yet to see his first flick – a parasitic venereal disease zombie movie called ‘The Shivers’ aka ‘They Came From Within’ (1975) – I’ve seen all the rest. And, really, he’s still getting better and better. Whew. Okay. So we were talking about ‘Eastern Promises’, right? ‘Eastern Promises’ is one of his best works thus far. It is as good a film as ‘The Godfather’. In fact, like ‘The Godfather,’ it, too, is concerned primarily with family and lies and has a slow-burn kind of effect going for it. It’s a little less melodramatic than ‘The Godfather,’ and a little smaller in scope, but really right up there with it all the same. To say anything about the plot would be to give too much of the movie away. I’ll just say it revolves around a baby, a diary, the Russian mafia, and Naomi Watts – who isn’t given much to do aside from being a plot device with some great acting chops. Ultimately, it’s the kind of movie that I imagine is even better the second time through due to the knowledge gained from the first viewing.

I know I’m planning on hitting it again, which is something I seldom do when a flick’s still in the cinemas. Aside from giving the obvious props to Mr. Cronenberg, I must declare that it’s Viggo Mortensen who truly rocks ass in this movie. Every gesture, every body movement is nuanced and perfect. He just plain is the character, and you never doubt it – all this despite the fact that, for much of the movie, he speaks Russian and has a thick and totally convincing accent. And for all you ladies out there (and curious men), yes the rumors are true: Viggo bares it all (and I mean all) in an amazingly kickass bath house fight scene towards the end of the movie that had me thinking a little of Ken Russell’s 1969 ‘Women in Love’ nude fight scene between Oliver Reed and Alan Bates. Viggo’s Mortensen aside, the rest of the cast is uniformly good (as with most Cronenberg flicks) with Frenchman Vincent Cassel a standout as Armin Mueller-Stahl’s screw-up son. And speaking of Mueller-Stahl, I’ve never seen icier blue eyes before or since. His portrayal of a Russian mafia leader is chilling and wonderful. Anywho, if you’re looking for yet another fully submersed Viggo Mortensen performance, or an absorbing movie that doesn’t talk down to its audience and has a few nice twists and turns, or if you just plain like David Cronenberg movies like any sensible movie fan should, then go check out ‘Eastern Promises.’