Customer Reviews

A History of Violence

5 star:		(149)
4 star:		(109)
3 star:		(61)
2 star:		(56)
1 star:		(85)

 

 

So much has been written about this film and the title. For most, the movie is about the way violence is encoded in our lives and how we all have an underlying current running through us. I think the movie is really the study of the relationship between the two main characters--Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) and Edie (Maria Bello).

These two actors are amazing the film, especially Bello, who deserves to become a household name. Their intereactions are always spot on as they drive the plot. The sideways glance, the tense look, the loving smile: every part means something.

These two characters are madly in love after seventeen or such years of marriage, and we see it through different ways. The first half of the movie is there to set up their relationship and the love they feel. But then everything is turned upside down, and we realize that these two people who have shared everything and love one another dearly really know nothing about what lies beneath. It's as if they have only shared a part of themselves.

It's this interaction and realization that makes the film so great. The plot almost seems beside the point; it's merely there to make use see the characters.

I give the film four stars instead of five because of some of the scenes were out of place, almost as if Cronenberg couldn't decide what kind of film to make. William Hurt is good at the end, for instance, but his character didn't fit. Watch the movie for the main characters' interactions and go along with the rest.

Director David Cronenberg's movies glisten with a surface sheen that is always perfect. His mise en scene is often pathologically devoid of human connection or touch, though his films are always thought provoking and often scandalous in their grasp of the detritus of our lives. Is there any more beautiful movie than "Dead Ringers?" Any movie as scandalous, off-putting yet compelling as "Crash?" (the version with Rosanna Arquette and Holly Hunter).
In his terrific new film, "A History of Violence" Cronenberg has it both ways: his film features a straight forward plot that he handles with just a slight out-of-kilter quality that adds crunch and bite to the story of a man, Tom Stall (the quintessential strong silent, Gary Cooper-type, Viggo Mortensen) who, when placed in a situation that requires swift and brutal force...vomits out the internal fortitude necessary from deep inside his psyche and bowels to come up with the goods to deal with the situation. "AHOV" then, is about violence, brutality and the far reaching and ever telescoping tentacles that both exhibit as they wreak havoc on Tom, his wife Edie (the luminous Maria Bello) and his family and friends.
Cronenberg is dealing with some lofty and controversial ideas here: Kill someone and forever pay the price for that murder, whether or not the crime is justified or not. Commit violence and that violence colors everything that you are, everything that you do for the rest of your life. Once you take someone's life how much of you, the essence, the soul, the heart of you is gone also?
Viggo Mortensen's Tom Stall is strong of mind and morals, tender, vulnerable, upstanding but ultimately conflicted. Mortensen turns in a shaded performance that not only shows up Tom's soft side but also his malevolent one as well. Maria Bello, usually miss-used in her previous films is a revelation here as Edie: intelligent, accomplished, dedicated and hopelessly in love with Tom but aware that many times being in love doesn't mean you know everything about the object of that love.
"A History of Violence" is Cronenberg's "Vertigo": his version of obsession, violence and retribution told the Cronenbergian way: slanted toward the perverse...bordering on the maniacal. Don't blame Cronenberg because he is not Hitchcock, for he has learned his lessons from the master well. Blame him because he has come up with a film that is provocative and multi-layered though: one as transparent as a silk screen, just slightly out of reach...beckoning us in for a closer, scalpel-like investigation of what makes us tick, the buttons to punch to make us react and the mechanics necessary to allow us to exist.

What can I say about David Cronenberg's latest work that hasn't already been said by film critics everywhere? My answer to that has to be: not much. A History of Violence will remind people that David Cronenberg is one of the more underappreciated film directors of the last 30 years and also one of its master craftsmen. Using a loose-adaptation (yet echoing some of the book's themes) of the John Wagner and Vince Locke graphic novel of the same name, Cronenberg creates a multi-layered film dissertation about the nature of violence. I will pause for a moment and say that the film also delivers as a taut, gripping, thriller that looks to ape the action-films of blockbusters past, but Cronenberg's skill as a director manages to keep the film above it's B-movie aspirations.

More well-known as the creator of eccentric and unusual fare with legions of fans and admirers in the horror community, David Cronenberg may have his most mainstream and accessible film to date since his remake of The Fly. In A History of Violence Cronenberg's existentialism continues to show as he probes through the dark and shadowy corners of human behavior and instinct. He posits a question of whether people as a whole --- no matter how saintly, well-balanced, and civilized --- secretly revels in the violence they see around them even as they denounce and feel uncomfortable around it. Some have seen this film as something of a historical commentary of the American history and how the nation itself has been shaped by its acceptance of violence and its many repercussions. I would say that those people are not far off the mark, but to compartmentalize Cronenberg's film to such a narrow focus is not fair to the film. Cronenberg deftly shows the brutality of violence and how its effect can be far-reaching and intimite at the same time.

As his past films dealt with the horror of the body politic (Shivers, Crash, The Brood, The Fly) and the nature of reality and existence (Videodrome, Dead Ringers, Naked Lunch, Spider, eXistenZ) Cronenberg continues these themes with this film. Despite the gore and viscera being small in comparison to his past works, History still show the carnage and horror that violent acts can perform on the frail human body. The film also points out that people as a whole deceive themselves of the true world around them in order to hold onto the ideal and the quaint. This is really put forward by the dynamic interaction between the character of Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) and his wife Edie (Maria Bello) from beginning to end. It is a testament to the excellent performances by both these actors that the audience truly believe and care for their characters on-screen. I'll have to say that this is Viggo Mortensen and Maria Bello's best work to date and it would be criminal of the industry not to reward them in some way come awards season. The chemistry between these two performers is genuine, searing and very intimate. The very last can be seen in graphic detail in the two scenes of sex between the characters. One in the beginning is naughtily playful and shows how much in love the two characters still are and the second being more brutal and primal as the hidden layers of each character is slowly peeled away to show whats been hidden all along.

For an art-film masquerading as an action-thriller, A History of Violence is very deliberate in setting up each violent outburst. There's an underlying dread that permeates through each set-up. We know that something is about to happen, but its not rushed and gradually builds-up until something has to break. The violence is not your stereotypical action sequence that looks staged, but comes and goes quickly with the brutality and lethality of reality. In fact, the violence has the feel of being very intimate. Everything is up close and personal. Nothing is done from a distance and each strike and violent act painful to see, yet in all instances each scene also gets a rousing response from the audience. This is particularly evident in a scene concerning Tom Stall's teenage son dealing with a particular high school bully in brutal fashion. Everyone in this film is touched by violence in some way or another. From the very young to the very old. The final scene at the dinner table is both haunting and familiar. With all that has been going on through Tom's life and that of his family there's a sense of acceptance of the violent genie that was unleashed in the beginning and one of "life must go on" mentality.

I must say that A History of Violence has to be one of the best films I've seen since I've been watching them. For a film that is really just a revenge-thriller similar to Chan-wook Park's Oldboy, Cronenberg's latest has so many layers and depth to it that anyone who sees it are going to be tempted to talk about its themes and subtext lon after they've left the theater. Where Oldboy is like a hard kick in the gut then a devastation stomp on the neck, A History of Violence is more insidious, intimate and subversive --- like a sharp papercut just beneath the fingernail that lingers and tells one that its going to be there for awhile and there to stay. Some may end up not liking the film due to its deliberate nature or not having enough people dying in elaborately staged action sequences, but that will only show exactly what Cronenberg has been trying to show. That people nowadays have been so inured and desensitized by violence that we've come to accept it as entertainment and actually have come to yearn and need it like a drug-addict looking for their next hit. One of the best films of 2005, if not one of the best in the past decade.

Not since STRAW DOGS (1971) have I seen a film that so strikingly makes the point that the capacity for violence is an inseparable part of the human condition. Even the meek inheriting the Earth have it - if pushed far enough.

Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) and wife Edie (Maria Bello) live in a small mid-western town with teenage son Jack (Ashton Holmes) and young daughter Sarah (Heidi Hayes). The couple own, and Tom manages, a diner on Main Street. One night at closing, two psychopathic killers enter the eatery to rob the place and have some bloody fun. (We know they're psychopaths because the film's opening sequence shows them brutally murdering a family that owns a roadside motel.) As his waitress is about to be raped, Tom reacts in a way that would make Dirty Harry proud. The killers are rendered dead in pools of blood, coffee, and broken glass, and Tom, with his foot impaled by a knife, becomes a local hero that makes the national TV news. However, this notoriety draws out of the woodwork a scarred, Mafia hit man from Philadelphia, Carl Fogarty (Ed Harris), and a pair of associate thugs. Carl insists to Tom and Edie that the former is really Joey Cusack, a big city killer that tried to take out Carl's left eye with barbed wire. Tom, of course, denies that he's ever been to Philly. Edie believes her husband. At least she does until witnessing his reaction when Fogarty et al confront Tom on their front lawn after they kidnap Jack. Maybe Hubby has secrets, you think?

At first, the audience believes that son Jack is a spineless wimp - until he's pushed too far in the hallway of his high school by a bully that's been tormenting him. (Is there an inheritable gene for mayhem, you might ask.) From all of us who've had sand kicked in our faces, way to go, kid! Even Edie isn't as turned off by violence as much as the thought that Tom has been lying to her all their married life. Indeed, an angry confrontation between the two escalates to a bout of consensual, frenzied sex that, while perhaps not "rough", was certainly uncomfortable and left bruises. (Is sex but low-level violence much as James Coburn's character in the 1967 comedy western WATERHOLE #3 called sex "assault with a friendly weapon"?)

Despite Tom's evident past, he's now a loving, committed father and husband and a solid, law abiding member of the community. OK, so he has a few lapses into old habits; they're all for good causes. As the very last scene infers, perhaps Edie can live with it. After all, she and her Hearth and Home are more stoutly defended by Tom's darker side than by some pacifist that wouldn't act until it's too late; other tribes should be so lucky.

A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE is a gritty, well-acted, visual essay that neither condones nor condemns the potential for violence that exists in all of us. It's just there waiting in the tall grass to be called forth as needed, and there's no anguished, PC-inspired, hand-wringing about that fact. It's not the greatest film of 2005, but I liked it very much.

David Cronenberg in his most mainstream film gives us the adaptation of the graphic novel of the same name.This film questions on the how far you will go to use violence to protect your family and how deep its connection with all of us.As we all know its human nature.

The film is fairly close to the graphic novel with minor little differences like for example names have been changed,also the town's name plus there are a couple of sex scenes that are not in the book.As the film starts we meet two bad guys in the middle of nowhere that cause the whole plot to unravel for Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) and his lawyer wife (Maria Bello) and his two kids Jack (Ashton Holmes) and Sarah (Heidi Hayes).While the two men are on the way to the small Indiana town that Tom lives.We see how life is in a small town and for Stall family.Its quiet, no fuss and hassels.Everyone knows everyone its most of the time a nice and quiet to live.While Tom and Eddie are ending a night in their diner that they own the two bad guys we saw in the start arrive.As they attempt to rob the place and threaten the people inside Tom in self defense kills both of them and saves the day.Now the hero,the event is all over the news.This as a event brings attention to mobster Fogarty.He believes Tom is a guy called Joey that he new from Philadelphia.This endangers the whole family.As Fogarty kind of stalks the family for Tom to reveal truth of who he really is.Is he Joey with Mafia connections or really Tom and its just a minor misunderstanding.

Every great film needs a great cast.Viggo Mortensen as Tom is one of his best roles yet.As a family man,husband and somewhat violent man Viggo is just great.Maria Bello in a great performance that will get her a Oscar nomination and already a Golden Globe nomination.Ed Harris is very good at playing the mean and stalking Fogarty.And last William Hurt.His part not that big,but its one of those performances that you just cant forget.He might get a nomination for a Oscar but its still not for sure.

This film asks the questions of what kind of history of violence do we have or anybody else has.Do you really know a another person.What person he truly is.And where is the limit of using violence to survive.And to protect those closes to you.And you can go also to the Darwinian sense the survival of the fittest.Also I cant forget even though that this film is Cronenberg's most mainstream film this does have Cronenberg touches everywhere.From the blood that has his touches for being quick,unexpected and disgusting for some people but its needed.And how he deals with characters to the fullest so we can understand them and feel in danger with them.Also the sex scenes in the film are needed to show the connection between the character's and their love and trust that they have.

On the DVD the film will be presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen,with both a English Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1 tracks.Extras will include a feature commentary by director David Cronenberg,a deleted scene with commentary by director David Cronenberg, a documentary called Acts of Violence and a Violence's History: United States Version vs. International Version featurette.Ending the special features will be an Unmaking of Scene 44 featurette, a Too Commercial for Cannes featurette, and a theatrical trailer for the film.

This is one of the best films of 2005.Almost on every list of the top ten films of 2005 by critics and already nominated for many awards.This is one of Cronenberg's best films next to The Fly as his best in my opinion.Plus this a New Line Platinum Edition that tells you one thing that this DVD is going to be worth the buck.

This movie had some, but not many, redeeming qualities: the graphic scenes (either sexual or violent) were pretty blunt and stark, and some scenes about how his son deals with high school bullies were good. For that I give it more than one star.

Aside from that, though, the story as a whole wasn't nearly as thrilling as we were led to believe; the whole "internal struggle" that Tom Stall endured wasn't captured well: the main character is just some dumb ex mobster who doesn't know what to do, and actually, Viggo Mortenson captured that rather well: he never looks too sorry or self-conflicted: he just looks like a rat who wants out of a trap. The way out is to go back to Philly and wipe out his brother and a few henchmen, which he does in rather unimaginative fashion.

Overall, that's my main gripe: the story is just boring: nothing brilliant or original about it. Toss in the bad acting (particularly during intimate family moments, which the cast simply wasn't capable of pulling off), and the lack of much action, I just can't give this more than two stars. You might consider renting it, but be prepared for a slow moving, largely contrived movie, that has some bad acting during the slower, more intimate scenes.

I'm the first to admit that I'm a huge David Cronenberg fan, but I was rather disappointed in A History of Violence. His most acclaimed movie so far, is also perhaps his most tepid. There's no doubt that A History of Violence is a great movie, for about an hour. After that, the movie falls apart due to a lack of drama, and suffers from a pointless and seemingly tacked-on ending.

The director does a fabulous job of creating an eerily quiet tone where the audience is on edge waiting for something horrible to happen at any moment, and perfectly films the violent fight scenes so we can see exactly what is happening. He also coaches some astounding performances out of his leads and fills the movie with raw emotion that flies off the screen, whether it is passion, hate or anger. But even Cronenberg can't save the limp second act, and the movie tends to drag, often straining the realms of credibility.

Viggo Mortensen stars as Tom Stall - a quiet man running a diner in the small town of Millbrook, Indiana. Tom leads a simple and fulfilling life of a man who is emblematic of the American dream, as he raises his family on a small farm and madly loves his wife, Edie (Maria Bello). But his serene life is shattered when two killers on a crime spree decide to rob Tom's diner late one evening. He shoots the men dead and overnight finds himself a small-town hero, as well as the focus of the national news media.

It's this notoriety that attracts the attention of three seriously unsettling shady figures, a crew fronted by the scarred and scary Ed Harris. These new villains seem entirely convinced that they know Tom from the past ... and that "Tom" is not even remotely the guy's name. So now this unassuming husband, devoted father, and mild-mannered businessman finds himself swept up into the harsh world of secrets, betrayals, deceptions, and a whole lot of violence.

It's a simple story that Cronenberg handles reasonably effectively but his mistake is that he ties up the enigma, the question of who Tom actually is, to early which leaves us wondering how he's going to pad out the rest of the film. Literally, we understand the last half hour, but artistically it is several steps below the wonderfully crafted first hour and it all feels quite anticlimactic and pedestrian.

The movie is mostly saved by the performances. Mortensen is absolutely sensational as Tom, the small town, shy, quiet family man who gets caught up in a world of trouble he never could have imagined, but he's smart enough to keep the mystery alive as he plays with his voice and eyes to make us question his past.

Maria Bello gives us one of her best performances to date as Edie, Tom's loving, devoted, and gradually desperate wife; she creates a character entirely real and sympathetic. She's gutsy and raw, but also remarkable sexual in nature. It's a brave, fearless performance that also includes, some full frontal nudity.

Sadly, William Hurt comes into the movie much too late and in the portion of the film that just doesn't work that well. He's hammy and over the top in a role he never should have taken. The audience in the screening we were at started giggle as he chewed the scenery and displayed one of the worst accents ever on screen; he was suitably creepy but also kind of funny.

The critics are, somewhat unjustifiably, having a love affair with A History of Violence, maybe because the simplistic nature of the subject matter makes it Cronenberg's most accessible film, and it deals fairly obviously with the hereditary nature of violence - treating it like a chronic disease; something that can be treated, delayed, and possibly even cured.

But as a tale of haunted pasts and borrowed lives, A History of Violence is sadly, Cronenberg's least interesting, settling for some genre set pieces and a pair of eccentric performances by villains, Ed Harris and William Hurt. The director certainly remains a master of creating unease and postulating complicated thematic interests, but with all its violence, the movie is ultimately bloodless, without any real body to it at all. Mike Leonard October 05.

Viggo Mortensen stars as Tom Stalls, a seemingly ideal husband and proprietor of a diner in rural Indiana. Oh yeah, his family is perfect too, aside from his son being a bit passive. His wife (Maria Bello) and he even enjoy an active sex life. Into this peace come a number of people intent on shattering his world. How will he react?

"A History of Violence" is a deceiving movie. It starts with a murder, then seems to veer toward being a story about a small-town family, and then...well all hell breaks loose. The script is based on a graphic novel by John Wagner and Vince Locke. I didn't know this until after I watched the movie, but it doesn't surprise me somehow. The film tackles, among things, the question of whether people can truly change. The twists and turns aren't predictable, but they also don't seem gimmicky; a balance most films cannot accomplish.

It's also a small film. As such, it invokes a feeling of intimacy - you quickly feel like you know these characters. When the inevitable violence erupts, it hits you viscerally in a way that most movie mayhem cannot. In many ways, the movie reminded me of "A Simple Plan"; it has that same kind of feelings - ordinary people doing things seemingly contrary to their nature. The cast is uniformly good, and Cronenberg's direction is terrific. His work here is so different than his prior films, really show-casing his versatility. "A History of Violence" is a terrific movie.

I cannot rate this movie without bias. i thought about ways to do it, but they all failed to convey what i truly felt about the film. After reading the Graphic novel there is simply no way to look at this film and objectively call it a great film. When I heard about the movie it was one I really looked forward to checking out, but before i did i took the time to hunt down a copy of the original graphic novel and read it for myself. after reading the book i realized that there was no way any director could screw this up.

Even a mediocre adaptation of the book would make a great film. The book was already written as the perfect script. It had three acts, all the personal conflict you could ever hope for, action plus a whole lot of stuff going on beneath the surface. All that needed to happen was to write the dialogue for the screen (because spoken dailogue needs to sound a little different in order to be natural), and cast some stars. I'll give the filmmakers some credit, the casting was perfect, and after reading the novel and hearing the cast, I was even more excited. The previews, again, just made it look even better. they show scenes from the buildup and tender moments with the family and everything you could possibly imagine after reading the book.

So it finally comes out on DVD (i don't often have time to get to the theaters, but i figureed this was worth the wait). I've heard how great the movie is from every peson who's seen it. It's nominated for awards and critics lve it, but I'm surprised that nobody's talking about the adaptation and how it tranlated from the book to the screen. And then i watch it and i realize why...

For 15 minutes to half an hour the adaptation is everything i expected. The acting is perfect, the scenes added to flesh out the story and the characters work within the plotline, and then it all turned sour. The middle act of the book, an entire one third of the story just disappears. his past is revealed in two minutes of dialogue, and his true nature is not nearly as powerful as it needs to be, and then he goes to philly to revisit his past and it goes from bad to worse. again his past is glossed over and instead of a desperate act to save an old friend who has been tortured for our hero's wrongdoings, we have a simple revenge act that is completely unsatisfying.

I tried to tell my dad that he should see the movie fist so that he could appreciate it on it's own before reading the book, but he apparently never heard that and read the book, going through the same excitement i had shown when imagining it as a movie. This is one of those movies you should probably watch, as long as you watch it before reading the book. If you have no interest in reading the graphic novel because you think they're for kids, first of all you are very wrong, but if you feel that way please watch and enjoy. I simply cannot do the same.

Viggo Mortensen plays a diner owner in a small town in middle America. He has a loving wife and two children. A good man living the American dream. One evening two criminals enter the diner to rob it and assault the waitress. Mortensen's mild mannered Tom Stall suddenly leaps into action, knocking one of the men out, grabbing his gun and eventually shooting both of them. Tom becomes a hero and attracts unwanted attention from the national media. Soon a man from the Philadelphia mob shows up claiming Tom is actually Joey, an ex-mobster from the old neighborhood. The rest of the movie explores the question, is Tom Tom or really Joey?

A History of Violence is interesting but moves a little too slowly for my taste. It also doesn't delve deeply enough into the mind of a man with a past he's trying to forget. It's all glossed over with no real exploration of his life. There is also a subplot with his teenage son, trying to show that his son may have inherited his father's violent tendencies. However, it all seemed contrived to me and didn't work at all. I didn't believe anything that happened with the son and it all felt tacked on.

The performances are good, but the script needed work. We never got any reasons for why Tom/Joey was the man he was growing up or why he decided to change. The violent scenes were well staged and believable but there wasn't anything real connecting them.