Vig-Go put some pants on, dammit!: "Eastern Promises"

I mean, really ... does anyone need to see your little Aragorn flopping around in the bathhouse? No. Just ... no.

Despite knowing full well that we see penis in this movie -- say it together ... automatic one-star deduction -- I still had Netflix serve this one up. Hell, Viggo Mortensen did get nominated, and I had heard it was more than decent. Besides, Naomi Watts isn't hard to look at, even if my dream of her recreating the nude scenes from "Mulholland Dr." and "21 Grams" are fading with each film.

Watts is a midwife in London who delivers a baby but has the young mother die in childbirth. The woman had a diary of sorts, though, which leads our heroine to the Russian mob. Yeah, thanks for nothing, diary.

The mob ... not so nice guys. Mortensen is a driver for the son (Vincent Cassel) of the boss (Armin Mueller-Stahl). Watts starts asking questions, which doesn't go over so well. Her mom and uncle also don't dig her investigation. Only Viggo seems somewhat tolerant -- and he wants her to go away, too -- but we see that he's got his own thing going on with these mob guys.

The story starts a little slow, setting up Naomi's and Viggo's respective circles before they overlap and grow uncomfortable. We see how sniveling Cassel is and how quietly menacing Mueller-Stahl is. We also appreciate Viggo's cool demeanor. IMDb says he did a bunch of research for this, and yeah, I bought him as a Russian body man.

Things get ever more tense as Watts finds out more and Mortensen has to reconcile his interest in her with his devotion to the mob. Absent the messy fight in the bathhouse -- hey, put that thing away! -- there isn't a whole lot of bang-bang. But it's still not all that pleasant.

Oh, and guiding all this is David Cronenberg, back for some more Viggo after "A History of Violence." Like that movie, Cronenberg doesn't get weird throughout "Promises," but he makes sure to give us some trademark squirm-inducing bloodshed. Then again, after you've seen Jeff Goldblum's jaw fall off in his transition to a fly, slitting a throat is nothing, I guess.