A History Of Violence
Based (loosely) on the graphic novel by John Wagner and Vincent Locke, “A History of Violence,” is the story of Every Man, Tom Stall, (played by Viggo Mortensen) living the simple life in Every Town, USA. He has a successful wife (played by Maria Bello) and two children and runs the diner in town in which he swaps stories of football and former girlfriends, where young sweet hearts still share the same ice cream dish, and the patrons promise to see each other in church on Sundays. It’s the veneer of an idyllic Americana. A veneer that gets stripped away by two men fresh off a motel killing who wander into the diner in search of some extra traveling money.
Tom leaps into action and upon the two men’s death becomes a national hero. The celebrity not only arouses Tom’s false modesty, but the attentions of some Philadelphia mobsters, who have a score to settle with a man Tom may or may not be.
“A History of Violence,” assumes that you already know where it’s going, and for the most part, you do. Like all great satires ‘Violence’ is able to poke fun at the action genre’s absurdity while at the same time indulging in the visceral pleasures that have made it such a standard.
Cronenberg seems to understand the fact that violence in itself is very cinematic, and there in lies the problem. Cronenberg takes dead aim on the cinema that dazzles the eye with impressive and breathtaking explosions and gun battles, while at the same time condemning such action out the other side of its mouth.
It is Tom’s wounded hero that inspires his previously pacifist son to engage a bully at school, and then eventually to take up a shotgun. His son, Jack (played by Ashton Holmes) is taken by the myth and story of his father’s heroism. So much so, that he desires to make that myth apart of himself. This seems to be at the heart of the film’s message. That despite the previous generations best intentions, the children are doomed to repeat the sins of the father.
Cronenberg gently chastises us for our sensory addiction by lingering too long on a blown away face, or a missing nose. Cronenberg is confident in his belief that despite our violence saturated media, we really haven’t seen it all.
Viggo Mortensen made a star by the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy gives a career performance here mirroring a young (or younger) Robert Duvall in terms of slow burn dramatic brilliance. Mortensen feeds us the myth of Tom Stall with his ‘oh shucks’ tone of voice and all-American maleness, settling in to a subtle slow and slightly sinister south Philadelphia accent once his violent history as Joey Cusack has been exposed. Maria Bello is given the burden (which she handles readily) of being simultaneously repulsed by her husband’s past and being irredeemably pleasured (literally) by it.
“A History of Violence,” is a black as night, gallows humored satire. The kind that probably would have become a routine genre piece and vanquished, under any hand less cool and less confident then Cronenberg’s.