A
startling new film threatens to blow the lid off one of the most violent and secretive criminal underworlds now operating in London: the Russian mafia.
Eastern Promises, directed by Canadian David Cronenberg, offers a disturbing portrait of the 'Vory V Zakone' brotherhood, a real Russian criminal gang first formed in the Siberian labour camps under Stalin.
On the surface, Eastern Promises is a romantic thriller, the story of a London midwife (Naomi Watts, right with Viggo Mortensen), who discovers the diary of an abused young Russian prostitute after she dies giving birth to a baby girl.
Mortensen plays Nikolai, the driver for a family of ruthless Russian gangsters, members of the 'Vory', who traffic in under-age prostitutes, hard drugs and other illegal activities.
What will shock cinephiles when it opens the London Film Festival on
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October 17 is the film's unflinching portrayal of the vicious methods of the 'Vory' and its bleak, disturbing portrait of modern London.
Apart from the brutality with which they control their criminal enterprises, members of the Vory are notable for their epic tattoos, telling the stories of their lives, their status in the 'Vory', even their sexual orientation. Mortensen sports 43 tattoos in Eastern Promises.
Although producer Paul Webster says the film's depiction of the 'Vory' is "fairly romantic", that's romantic as Baudelaire might mean it, not Barbara Cartland. "We have had corroboration from people who have had experience of these gangsters.
"One guy told us he'd been on a plane with about 20 guys like that, who marched into first class and made all the passengers stand up and they sat in their seats and drank their champagne. At the same 
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