"That's a nice-a donut."
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
A History of Violence (2005)
David Cronenberg, the Canadian film director, has made many acclaimed but oftentimes weird or inaccessible movies. With A History of Violence, based on a graphic novel, he has crafted one of his more "Americanized" films. It is a stellar examination of a simple middle-American man and his family, and the wrenching fallout from what seemed like an extraordinary act of heroism.
Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) is the owner and proprietor of a small town diner in Indiana. He has a loving wife (Maria Bello), and two fine children. One dark evening as Tom and his crew are closing up for the day, and a couple customers are still finishing their meal, a pair of vicious-looking men come in and demand coffee. It is an apparent armed robbery, but one of them also begins to assault one of the workers. In a split-second decision Tom manages to diffuse the situation, and the two bad men end up dead. He is quickly hailed as a local hero and becomes a media sensation ...doing no small wonder for business at the diner. The splendor is short-lived, though, as Tom is soon visited by a couple creepy-looking mobsters, led by Carl Fogarty (Ed Harris). Carl and his henchmen claim that Tom is actually "Joey Cusack", another mobster from Philadelphia who once nearly killed Carl. Ask him "how come he's so good at killing people," Carl tells Tom's wife Edie. But Tom is adamant: he has always been Tom and he's never even been to Philly.
Does Tom Stall harbor a dark secret - a history of violence - or is this just a terrible coincidence or nightmarish joke? To answer this question, the second half takes a somewhat different turn. A series of increasing violent and frightening encounters breed much turmoil and threatens to tear the Stall family apart. What started as a loving and adoring, almost like teenagers-in-love, relationship quickly becomes a relationship on the brink of disaster - with much anger and fear. However, though these family scenes are sometimes intense and definitely integral to the story, it felt as if the relationships soured perhaps a little too quickly, without quite enough discussion. Still, it does well to contrast Tom's actions and encounters with son Jack's rough life, including his dealings with a couple school bullies.
Mortensen, in a return to a smaller role since his days as a king in the world of hobbits, is quite good. It is a quiet, understated and reflective role of a tormented man. It's not quite the showy performance that awards are handed out for, but effectively shows that he is a very fine actor. Bello is also great; very confident and commanding as Edie, easily showing the wide range of sometimes-conflicting emotions necessary for her role. She has certainly established herself as one of Hollywood's leading character actresses. Though, I found it unfortunate that her role is lessened in the second half. The very solid cast is rounded out by Harris is one of his best performances in years, Ashton Holmes as Jack in a wonderfully emotive turn, and even William Hurt in an Oscar-nominated performance.
In the end, I would have preferred the truth about Tom to be much more ambiguous. But what Cronenberg and company does very well is to tell a thrilling, dramatic story about a family in crisis. At times, it feels sort of like a cross between Todd Field's In the Bedroom and David Lynch's Blue Velvet. A History of Violence is a relatively short movie (just over 90 minutes prior to the end credits), and doesn't waste a single moment.
The Verdict: A-.
Michael Bentley 11:23 AM
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