While the rest of SAB (and all the other cool kids) went to Broadway today, I took the opportunity to catch up on some much needed sleep and also see what’s probably the best movie I’ve seen in 2007 so far: “Eastern Promises,” the new film from one of my favorite directors, David Cronenberg.

Cronenberg is certainly a love/hate director, specifically because of the way he deals with sexuality, violence and subtext. “Eastern Promises” might just be his most accesible film to date, despite it’s intense violence (it’s sporadic though) and disturbing sexual content. It plays more like a low-key Russian “Godfather” then anything else.

Naomi Watts is fine as our entrance into the strange world of the Russian mob in London. It’s a pretty uninteresting role for the most part, as she tries to search for the relatives of a dead Russian teenager and the late mother’s newborn child. She takes the Russian diary to a fancy Russian restaurant, giving the book to the owner to translate, who’s ties to the dead mother are a lot more sinister then we’d like to believe.

Of course, that all sounds rather simple, no? But this is Cronenberg, and nothing is ever simple. Enter Viggo Mortensen as Nikolai, a Russian driver for the always excellent Vincent Cassel. Nikolai has aspirations of his own, and soon gets tied up with Watts over the course of the story.

To say more about the plot is to ruin the sheer fun the movie has in twisting and turning this way and that; giving us new ideas about characters we once hated, or once loved. As I said before, Cassel does his usual excellent work here, but the star of this movie is undoubtedly Mortensen. It’s his best performance by far, Oscar-worthy in every way. It’s a new career-high work for the actor, who’s performance is of such an alarming quality as to almost over-power the entire film. When he’s not on screen, the movie suffers as a result. But thankfully for us, he’s on screen for almost every scene.

And naturally, he’ll most be remembered for the scene where he fights two assassins fully naked in a steam room. Yes, King Aragorn goes full frontal, but it’s not gratuituous or even inappropriate in the least. Cronenber understands the nature of violence and sexuality more so than any other filmmaker working right now. By stripping Viggo of all his clothes, every punch and slash becomes that much more cringe-worthy and painful. The two assassins are clothed in black leather, while Viggo’s black tattoo’s (telling his life story), soon become covered in red blood. It’s the greatest fight scene in recent memory; it’s incredibly emotional, gripping, horrific and appropriate.

I’d love to bring this movie to campus for the spring, but I don’t think I’ll be doing so. I can see and understand why people would be offended by this movie’s content (besides the bath-fight, there are two absolutely gnarly throat cuttings, and a horrific sexual scene with a prostitute), and the last thing I want to do is offend people in our film selection. But I do strongly urge you to check “Eastern Promises” out on your own when you get the chance. It’s what we all want in movies: it’s a great story told brilliantly. It’s beautiful acted, with superb directing and great tech work (specifically the editing and the gorgeous Russian black and red art direction). It earns it’s R-rating - it’s a movie for adults, and it treats it’s audience with the respect we hopefully deserve.

Since I love ranking movies, here’s how I think it ranks in the Cronenberg filmography (from what I’ve seen):

1. The Fly (****)
2. Videodrome (****)
3. Eastern Promises (****)
4. A History of Violence (****)
5. Naked Lunch (*** and a half)
6. Crash (***)
7. Spider (** and a half)
8. Scanners (** and a half)
9. eXistenZ (**)