A History of Violence

Quirky, Powerful and off Genre, 26 December 2006

Author: gary-444 from United Kingdom


I caught this movie unaware of who the Director and Cast were, let alone what the storyline was. I was rewarded with an above average movie which flirted with the Gangster genre, aided and abetted by ingredients from Western Revenge stories, and the unexplained, from sci-fi plots.

Like many, I have enjoyed David Cronenberg's The Fly, The Dead Zone, and Dead Ringers, with an honourable mention to Crash. Viggo Mortensen excels as the lead Tom Stall, the ordinary man with extraordinary killing skills.Ed Harris is a savage counterpoint as Carl Foggerty, Stall's nemesis.

The opening failed Coffee shop robbery starts off almost as an homage to Tarrantino's similar scene in "Pulp Fiction", but ends much more violently and unexpectedly. Cronenberg walks a difficult line throughout.He claims a distaste for violence and the glorification of it, but the raw brutality shown here is as graphic, and raw, as anything you will see anywhere.

The sub text throughout is of the lurking power of violence which is almost expressed as an extra terrestrial power, a nod to his sci fi antecedants.Sex is similarly deployed in an ambivalent manner. One scene has Stall and his wife acting out a schoolkid cheerleader fantasy culminating in explicit, full on sex, the other key sex scene has Stall brutally forcing himself on her before she acquiesces, consents, and crucially, enjoys.

Ultimately the film aspires, but fails to match, the flawed hero grandeur of say "Carlito's Way" ,which itself has Shakespearean Tragic pretensions.A cameo performance by William Hurt, gaining him bizarrely a "best supporting actor" nomination, is a distraction.

The lack of local interest in the mounting feast of violence requires serious suspension of disbelief. But the integrity of performance from the entire ensemble is a joy.The 94 minute running time is tight and disciplined, and the otherworldly dimension of Stall, his wife, the luscious Maria Bello, and son in particular, provides nuances to a traditional core plot which lift this well out of the ordinary.