David Cronenberg cemented his working relationship with leading man Viggo Mortenson in his first Oscar-nominated role in this brutal crime thriller set during the holiday season. 

When Russian-British midwife Anna (Naomi Watts) sees her teenage patient die during childbirth, she has to find out where the homeless girl came from in hopes of finding a potential home for her now-orphaned baby. Following the girl’s diary the week before Christmas, she is drawn into the world of London’s Russian mafia and the human trafficking occurring behind the front of a traditional restaurant. Warned off by the local don (Armin Mueller-Stahl) and his son (Vincent Cassel), she finds the warnings from their bodyguard Nikolai (Viggo Mortenson) only bringing her deeper into their world.  

With a screenplay by Steven Knight (Dirty Pretty Things, the BBC’s Peaky Blinders) Cronenberg trades in his traditional body horror, but keeps the visceral violence you know him for, in this journey through the dark margins of London’s underground. With an unforgettable knife fight, Eastern Promises shows that Cronenberg can keep his edge in any genre and with any subject matter.