"OK so it WAS a gun in your pocket..."
Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) is a well known, well liked small town café manager.
Or is he?
He works long hours, knows all his customers – and they know him – and has a loving wife (Maria Bello) and two kids.
Or does he??
Stall is a humble quiet man who it seems wouldn’t hurt a fly.
Or is he???
While the answer to all the above questions is actually “Yes”, what A History of Violence actually asks is ‘did he always’.
When Stall finds himself, his staff and customers confronted by cold-blooded criminals threatening all sorts of nasty just prior to closing shop one evening, he swiftly takes action and nullifies the risk… By expertly disarming and killing both assailants.
Stall’s actions bring all sorts of media attention and public recognition, including a couple reluctant interviews and unwanted stories lauding his unexpected act.
Unfortunately for Stall and family, this short term media attention brings new visitors to the town, visitors that saw the TV items and feel that they know more about Tom Stall than everyone else in the town, including his own wife and family. The initial visit is lead by Carl (Ed Harris), a menacing, well dressed man with extensive facial disfigurement who refers to Stall as nothing other than Joey from Philly, something Tom from not-Philly writes off as mistaken identity.
But Carl is not easily dissuaded, and his dogged determination and line of questioning is both disconcerting to Stall and his loving wife. Surely Tom is nothing more than a hard working everyman and not the cold blooded murderer Carl describes.
The man who he alleges is responsible for rearranging his face.
The film features some solid acting (William Hurt shows up to play a role that’s against his normal ‘type’), has a couple of unexpectedly violent and gory moments and some even more unexpected sex scenes. My problem with A History of Violence is for a film that wants to be realistic no-one actually acts in realistic fashion. In fact the more you think about things the less realistic it all becomes…
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David Cronenberg has made a career out of seeing things just a little differently from everyone else. But it seems in later years he has eschewed the more way-out themes of body part distortion and straight up weirdness – yet retained the occasional sudden burst of violence – and with this film and Eastern Promises has secured a little more box office success to add to the reasonably consistent critical acclaim.
If anything though I think that the fact critics came clamouring to congratulate Cronenberg for the more recent films emanated from the fact that they didn’t fully understand his earlier work, but so wanted to admire it.
I am no different, I wanted to like some of his earlier efforts yet couldn’t embrace them wholeheartedly, especially Videodrome, Dead Ringers and eXistenZ (I found Crash exploitative rubbish).
An almost-mainstream film like A History of Violence is just more easy to understand, so perhaps the knee jerk reaction was ‘hey we get this one, so even if it isn’t great let’s talk it up, because we might never get one this straightforward again!’
A History of Violence is solid, well acted and boasts a couple of memorable moments, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves people.
Final Rating – 6.5 / 10. The ingredients are in place: A ‘name’ director and solid cast, along with a reasonable premise and some effective scenes, but that doesn’t alone justify the moist fawning this film seemed to engender upon release.
