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Tom Stall (Viggo Mortenson) is a small town family man with a loving wife Edie (Maria Bello); a teenage son Jack (Ashton Holmes) and a pre-pubescent daughter Sarah (Heidi Hayes).
Tom owns and runs the local diner and is well-respected in the community.
One day two very bad men enter the diner and hold the place up. When it becomes apparent that they are going to kill everyone there, Tom leaps into action and violently defeats the bandits. This makes Tom somewhat of a local celebrity and he is featured on the news.
Several days later, a gangster named Carl Fogerty (Ed Harris) shows up in Tom's diner and starts calling him Joey. It seems Carl saw Tom on the news and is convinced that Tom is a man from Carl's past. Tom attempts to deflect the attentions of this unpleasant man, but Carl won't stop pestering Tom about it, and begins harassing his family.
A History of Violence is a masterfully constructed, potently dramatic, excruciatingly tense, wonderfully acted movie that ranks among the best I have ever seen.
Director David Cronenberg (The Fly; Naked Lunch; Dead Ringers) creates an agonisingly unsettling tone where a sense that things could explode at any moment is never alleviated.
He doesn't allow the viewer to make any presumptions about where the story will go, and shows early on that anything can happen. You are completely at his mercy - it's a liberating feeling of cinematic helplessness.
A History of Violence tells a powerfully dramatic story, but it exists primarily as an absolute masterpiece of suspense.
Cronenberg has built up a body of work that is very much concerned with the human body as metaphor. His films often feature graphically explicit portrayals of bizarre anatomical events.
Superficially, A History of Violence, with its Western-like structure and familiar setting seems to be a step away from Cronenberg's recurring themes. But the film ultimately reminded me of David Lynch's The Straight Story in how it initially might appear to be removed from a director's style, but when you look deeper into the film, it very much embodies his work.
Here Cronenberg intertwines sex and violence into a thorny, difficult, but ultimately profound psychological heap. As the film progresses, the two elements move closer and closer to the point where they are almost indistinguishable.
He also displays a deft hand for staging violent action scenes that are graphic and full-on, but handled maturely enough so that they don't feel gratuitous.
Mortensen's inherent vulnerability works extremely well for his character in A History of Violence, underplaying this gentle small town family man with much conviction. It is arguably the most effective use of his talents so far.
Mario Bello holds up her end capably, once again showing she is one of modern cinema's great underutilised leading ladies. Ashton Holmes as their teen son is excellent also, and his sub-plot effectively mirrors the film's main narrative drive.
These three actors create a convincing family dynamic that solidly anchors the film's drama by effectively evoking just how much Tom has to lose.
Ed Harris is subtly, but effortlessly, menacing. Hurt (in an Oscar-nominated supporting role) pops up briefly to remind us how great he can be - it's nice to see the man who at one point was Hollywood's go-to-guy for WASP-ish roles play against type.
Cronenberg has created an instant classic with A History of Violence - it is at once both quietly wonderful and explosively jolting. It is also tender and harsh; pulpy and profound; beautiful and disgusting; sexual and violent.
Highly recommended.
Dominic Corry
A History of Violence opens nationwide on March 16.
