Eastern Promises wastes no time letting the audience know it will get wet if it insists on sitting in the front row.

Out of the gate with startling speed, Cronenberg’s direction communicates urgency right from the opening.  But the bloodletting there isn’t gratuitous and, significantly, not all of the blood in the first act is related to acts of violence.  Indeed, this director of several seminal horror films in the ‘70s and ‘80s splashes and drips the red stuff across characters in diverse contexts, including a newborn in its natural state and the medical team that delivered her.  For those familiar with his work, it’s readily apparent that Cronenberg is in some ways mining the same themes of body horror, maternal instinct (The Brood, 1979), and the link between violence and sexuality (Shivers, 1976; The Fly, 1986) that he’s been exploring for three decades.  What stands out about Eastern Promises, however, is that he seems more explicitly interested in what could be termed “body kinship” (a concept also present in 1988’s Dead Ringers).  I’m referring here to the notion that the meaning and value of human life is best observed at its alpha and omega points, in the commonalities of viscera we all share and which form the true connective tissue that links us as human beings.  Steven Knight’s impressive script dramatizes the moral considerations that result from such an awareness.

And so, driven by an ethical imperative that matches his artistic preoccupations, Cronenberg shows an audacity in delivering the goods that's understandable:  the proliferation of close-ups in Eastern Promises is but one mark of a style that is often literally "in-your-face."  In fact, one can’t help feeling that the director must identify a bit with Jerzy Skolimowski’s rudely truth-telling Uncle Stepan character.  Throughout the movie, the camera is intent on demystifying everything from throat-slittings to preparing a corpse for a body dump, to what a fight-to-the-death is like if one of the participants is forced to engage in it while naked.

Again, though, let’s give credit to Knight for delivering such a strong screenplay.  Full of portents, aphorisms, and meaningful ambiguities, Knight’s work contains the kind of riches that bring out the best in world-class filmmakers and actors such as those assembled here.  About midway through the movie it hit me that Cronenberg really needs scripts like this to be at his best—thick, multilayered stories, dense with resonance and chock full of meaty roles for several formidable actors.  In the absence of this kind of anchored writing, Cronenberg’s films threaten to collapse under the strain of his own gravitas, as happened in the overrated A History of Violence (2005).

To be sure, there are some points where the energy flags and Eastern Promises verges on becoming a too-earnest “dramatic thriller” rather than being a crime flick.  There are also several oddly old-fashioned elements, including both a “recovering-a-diary” plot device and an increasingly maudlin voice-over reading from that same document.  Finally, there are some lapses in believability (is hospital security really that lax in the UK?) and the villain of the story gets his comeuppance off-screen, a no-no if one is really setting out to build a satisfying thriller.

Still, the film delivers fascinating performances, brilliant set pieces, and, to top things off, a solid twist or two near the end that I for one never saw coming.  You can choose not to see Eastern Promises, but if you do you’ll be missing one of the best pictures of the year.