At the heart, it's about blood. With Cronenberg, it's always about blood. No other director of his stature has built a career out of such a fascination with blood, and the other assorted slick bodily fluids that course through Cronenberg's filmography. What makes him unique, and apart from the average gorehound, is his coldly clinical presentation of the warm organic matters that make up life, and the deeper truths he uses them, slyly, as an avenue to reveal. Eastern Promises is about blood, but in the familial as well as the literal sense. For the director, it's quite clearly a companion piece to (and just as good as, if not better than) 2005's fantastic A History of Violence. Both films focus closely on the importance of family. The family you come from, the family you choose, and the families that choose you. more ›