There are several moments in "Eastern Promises" that warrant discussion. The bloodletting that opens the film, for example,
or the way someone puts out a cigarette with his own tongue before casually cutting up a corpse. You remember things like that. But you will also remember -- and probably discuss in the most depth -- the scene in which a completely naked Viggo Mortensen engages in a brutal hand-to-hand fight in a bathhouse. There are good reasons for Mortensen to be naked in the scene, both thematically and from a story standpoint. The movie was directed by David Cronenberg, whose films are often extreme but seldom gratuitous. Here Mortensen plays Nikolai, a chauffeur for Russian mobsters in London who is well on his way to becoming a wise guy in his own right. Bathhouse meetings are traditional for men in this profession because they allow you to see the tattoos -- and thus the career history, almost like military medals -- of the men you're negotiating with. It also means, in Nikolai's case, that he is completely vulnerable. We've all had nightmares about being naked, but it's usually not the nudity that's alarming; it's the fact that we're naked when we shouldn't be. Imagine being attacked by armed thugs. Now imagine it happens when you're defenseless, nude, and in a slippery room surrounded by hard tiles and sharp-cornered benches. Watching this scene, which would be ghastly even if everyone were fully clothed, you can't help but recoil at the tension of it.
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