A History of Violence

This movie was...a bit odd. Good, but odd. I thought I knew where things were going, but then halfway through the film I got confused and realized that I had no clue where the director, David Cronenberg (Crash) was taking the audience.

A History of Violence centers on Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen), a quiet family man living in a small, peaceful Indiana town. He runs the town’s diner, gives his children helpful fatherly advice, and is happily married to Edie (Maria Bello), who at random times decided to give a rather questionable acting performance. Despite her flashes of acting incompetence, Tom loves Edie, and the two quietly go about their contented small-town life. Cronenberg spends a good portion of time developing the characters, which allows the audience to fully appreciate the family’s day-to-day routines and personalities before bringing in the catalyst for the plot. Late one evening as Tom and his two employees are closing up the diner, two strangers enter and attempt to rob the restaurant. Tom at first attempts to keep the situation from escalating, but once it becomes clear that the two men intend to kill him and his employees, he almost effortlessly disarms them before being forced to kill them. The resulting media attention that proclaims Tom a town hero brings with it a Philadelphia mob boss, Carl Fogarty (Ed Harris), who menacingly strolls into town with two thuggish escorts and insists that Tom is actually former mobster Joey Cusack. Carl stays in town for several days, harassing Tom and Edie, and insisting that Tom is actually Joey despite Tom’s assurances that he has the wrong guy. Carl makes it clear that he has only one rather violent thing in mind for Tom/Joey, who apparently was responsible for disfiguring Carl’s face many years ago back in Philadelphia. While Tom appears to be as baffled as his everyone else as to the mobster’s apparent case of mistaken identity, the audience is never really given an indication as to the truth of the matter until later in the movie.

Up until this point in the film, I thought I had a clear idea where things were going, but what I had assumed would be the ending happened too soon. It became clear that the film was not about Tom’s conflict with Carl or the mystery of whether or not he actually is Joey Cusack, but in fact about a man forced to use violence in order to survive, as well his struggle to overcome his inherent natural tendencies in order to become the person he chooses to be. Obviously, since the film is interested in exploring violence, there were some extremely violent scenes and some rather gruesome shots of the consequences of that violence, but the majority of time is spent on Tom’s character development as opposed to those particular altercations.

There were moments toward the end of the movie where I and several other people in the audience started laughing at the near ridiculousness of the scenes, although some of the characters were equally dumfounded at the events unfolding around them, so I suspect that this “humor” might have been intentional. I walked out of the theater feeling that I definitely liked the movie, although it was a bit strange at times. Overall it was an interesting and well-constructed story, however, so I recommend it.