In a David Cronenberg movie, people usually talk about the violence, such as in, well, "A History of Violence." That probably won't be true with his new film, "Eastern Promises." It's a thriller starring Viggo Mortensen as Nikolai, a taciturn chauffeur for a family of Russian mobsters living in London. The biggest scene takes place in a steam room. Nikolai is sitting there in a towel, taking a peaceful shvitz, when two rival mobsters lumber in and attack him. It's incredibly violent, of course, but the really shocking thing is that Mortensen plays the whole four-minute fight completely naked. It's quite possibly the longest male nude scene ever in a mainstream Hollywood film. "In this age of screen grabs, I realize people are going to obsess about it," Mortensen says. "But it's not gratuitous." But wasn't he even a little nervous about exposing himself like that? "That's the advantage of working with a real actor as opposed to a star," says Cronenberg, who took two entire days to shoot the scene. "We weren't worried about you seeing his balls." More likely, Viggo was worried about you thinking about him as Aragorn for the rest of his career. Ever notice how when an actor really wants to move beyond a supersuccessful role, he drops trou? It's the Daniel Radcliffe School of I'm Not Harry Potter Anymore! In any event, Mortensen's fans don't care about his motivation. "I don't want to give you the impression that we're all sex-crazed middle-aged women," says Lynn Gibson, who runs the Viggophile.net fan site. "But we are quite looking forward to it."
—Ramin Setoodeh
from Newsweek Entertainment
