David Cronenberg’s latest film stars Viggo Mortensen and Naomi Watts in a gritty gangster thriller set in North London. It concerns the death of a young teenager, the diary that she leaves behind and the implications of a Russian gang behind her death.

Mortensen, who plays the driver of the gang, puts in a performance of both menace and intrigue: dressed in his smart black suit, you are never quite sure if he will lose his cool.

The story is well-paced and the dialogue good, with enough humour sprinkled around to soften the often very tense scenes. The violence, as you might expect from Cronenberg, is shocking and, in the case of the bath house fight scene, incredibly brutal.

Even though the ending ties up a few too many loose ends, I found it a very enoyable gangster film and Mortensen’s performance deserves the Oscar nomination.