The fuse on "Eastern Promises" is short, and director David Cronenberg wastes no time in taking a match to it and starting the pyrotechnics.

Minutes into the thriller, a man's throat is slit. But the razor doesn't glide over his neck and produce tidy trickles or even rivulets of blood. No, the killer seems intent on almost sawing the victim's head off.

Before you can fully swivel your neck back toward the screen, a barefoot, pregnant girl wanders into a drug store. "Please, I need help," she says, before hemorrhaging and collapsing.

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'Eastern Promises'

• Director: David Cronenberg.
• Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts, Vincent Cassel.
• Rating: R for strong brutal and bloody violence, some graphic sexuality, language and nudity.
• Web site: 'Eastern Promises'

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She dies, but leaves behind a newborn and a Russian diary of what will prove to be broken promises and incriminating truths. A London midwife named Anna Khitrova (Naomi Watts) is caught between both, as she tends to the infant and looks for someone to translate the diary, so she can find the family of mother and child.

Anna's churlish, insulting Russian uncle suggests she place the diary in the teenager's coffin and bury her secrets. But her search leads to a restaurant specializing in Trans-Siberian Russian cuisine and its grandfatherly owner, Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl), his volatile son, Kirill (Vincent Cassel), and the Russian-born Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen), who drives and cleans up after them.

With hair brushed back from his face and the ability to put his cigarette out on his tongue, Nikolai looks like he's been frosted over. He begins to thaw slightly after meeting Anna, and she, recovering from her own personal losses, comes alive again.

She serves as our sometimes bewildered guide as we wander into a secret world of criminals with Eastern European roots. They are part of a brotherhood of thieves called the Vory V Zakone, and they traffic in the most precious commodity of all.

Their criminal histories are tattooed on their bodies, but many people are not what they seem, and it's what Anna finds beneath the ink-stained skin that surprises and endangers.

The first thing people mention after seeing "Eastern Promises" is the fight scene between a naked Mortensen and two clothed, armed attackers in a steam room. It's audacious, underscoring Nikolai's skill, his drive to survive and willingness to endure anything.

As you can guess from that scene, this is not a soft R. The violence is brief but intense, the subject matter disturbing and adult.

Cronenberg has found a muse in Mortensen, his "History of Violence" star who disappears behind Nikolai's black jacket, his Russian accent and ramrod posture. The director uses Mortensen, Watts, Cassel and Mueller-Stahl -- plus the haunting voice of the teenage diary writer -- to lead us through the shadowy life imagined by writer Steven Knight.

They open a trap door to an illicit world that exists in London and other major cities and we tumble through it.