Eastern Promises

Eastern Promises (2007) is a crime thriller directed by David Cronenberg that you can watch online on iFILM. Naomi Watts plays Anna, a London midwife left holding a newborn and a handwritten diary after a teenage Russian girl dies on her table without a name, without papers, without anyone to call.

The diary pulls Anna toward Semyon — a gracious restaurant owner played by Armin Mueller-Stahl, who runs far more than a kitchen. His driver Nikolai, played by Viggo Mortensen, carries his biography on his skin: prison tattoos that the Russian criminal world reads like a file. He is careful with words, precise in everything. Vincent Cassel plays Kirill, Semyon's volatile son, whose recklessness keeps putting everyone at risk.

Cronenberg made this two years after A History of Violence, again with Mortensen, again probing the distance between a man's surface and what lies underneath. Mortensen earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for this role. Stream Eastern Promises (2007) online on iFILM.