Viggo Mortensen

David Cronenberg & Viggo Mortensen: [Mortensen:] That's a puzzle...if you look at Schopenhauer, he talks about compassion. And why does someone, when it does him no good whatsoever, go and assist someone?

[Cronenberg] investigates his own cinematic propensity for violence and skill at purveying it...sex and violence can be random, can be animal, and certainly can be satisfying.

Eastern Promises' unusually ambiguous character study makes for a different kind of crime drama, a striking if not entirely satisfying one.

A big, bold Hollywood movie that won't be winning any awards for subtlety but can't be denied its popcorn appeal.

Harris has made himself a reputation as a mark of quality...Like Pollack, Appaloosa has the best of both worlds, with Harris both in front of and behind the camera.

A potent and distinctly philosophical morality play about human instinct, the moral cost of survival, and a father’s love for his child...

This pretty period-pictorial companion piece to the novel fatally misses out on the brain-firing raw buzz that Kerouac felt and passed on to his readers...

The film’s saving graces are the uniformly strong performances...and its intriguing subject matter...[but it] develops third-act problems as it devolves into calculated contrivances, didacticism, and sentiment.

Though breezily entertaining, this cinematic vehicle also lurches into and out of the usual racial potholes, making its song of the South--and North--catch in the throat.

Director Ron Howard and screenwriter William Nicholson do an excellent, bang-up job of adapting this complex story in to a feature film.