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Credit should also go to the best ensemble cast that Cronenberg has ever assembled. Watts shines in a role that could've been disastrous in a lesser actress’s hands. In fact, the ferocity of her performance is so subtle that many viewers may not recognize just how great she is in this part. She doesn’t match anyone with violence, but with the strength of her passion and inner power. Cassel perfectly plays the drunken, volatile, possibly gay Kirill. He’s a wild character who feels truly unpredictable and dangerous. Mueller-Stahl is commanding as the quietly vicious Semyon, able to give Anna a paternal warmth, but other people an icy cold-bloodedness that makes him even more intimidating than Kirill’s wild man villainy.

The star of the ensemble, however, is Mortensen, who gives the greatest performance that Cronenberg has ever coaxed out of an actor (and he's had some great performances in his movies). I was not prepared for this type of performance from Mortensen before A History of Violence, and I had expected coming into Eastern Promises for him to be great again, but nothing he's done in the past that could have prepared me for how brilliant he is here. Nikolai is smart, but he’s not the smartest guy in the room. He’s not that character. But there is obviously a lot going on behind those icy eyes. His accent is absolutely perfect, to the point that you never even think “oh it’s Viggo Mortensen with an accent.” It’s just Nikolai.

There is very real feeling violence in the movie, as there has been in nearly every Cronenberg movie, but the violence is not exploitative. Again, Cronenberg doesn't necessarily want to thrill you with action sequences or fight scenes, he wants you to see how difficult it would be to fatally slice someone up with a razor. He wants you to feel the consequences to the body when you get stabbed with a knife (this bringing in elements of Cronenberg’s classic body-horror genre, but this isn’t a horror movie, that’s just a nice thematic tie-in with Cronenberg’s career). As he himself has pointed out, there are only about four or five scenes of violence in the movie, but you will hear people talk about how violent it is. It's not because there is a lot of it, it's because Cronenberg takes violence seriously and doesn't want to trivialize it by making it part of a standard action sequence. In so doing, the violence makes a bigger impact in people's minds.

The movie has also become somewhat notorious for an extended fight sequence in a bath house where Viggo Mortensen is completely naked throughout. This was also not done simply to give the movie a calling card; it was done because Nikolai has nothing to hide behind in this fight. No pads, no armor, no weapons. It makes the fight all the more effective because we can see how vulnerable Nikolai is to attack, and that adds an extra layer of danger and suspense to the scene. Also, kudos to Mortensen for taking on that scene when pretty much every other star in Hollywood would've balked at it. Cronenberg even said himself that he was lucky he cast an actor in the part and not a star.

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