David Cronenberg's crime drama A History of Violence surprised many in 2005. The reason for this was not the quantity and nature of the explicit violence and similar "problematic" content in the film, but rather the fact that many saw this film as "conventional", i.e. much closer to Hollywood's mainstream than some kind of "artsy" content that was supposed to break the boundaries of film expression. It is precisely thanks to this "conventionality" that A History of Violence went relatively unnoticed, and caused less of a stir than the more hyped, although inferior "serious" films of its time, such as Brokeback Mountain and Crash.
The plot, based on the 1997 graphic novel by John Wagner and Vince Locke, is set in the small town of Millbrook, Indiana, where the quiet diner owner Tom Stall (played by Viggo Mortensen), the protagonist, lives. His life embodies all the ideals of the American middle class - he has an attractive wife Edie (played by Maria Bello) and an adorable 5-year-old daughter Sarah (played by Heidi Hayes), while his teenage son Jack (played by Ashton Holmes) is the star of the school baseball team and the family pride. However, this idyll will be brutally interrupted by two wandering psychopaths who burst into his diner with intention to rob, torture and kill everyone present. To their great surprise, Tom proves more than capable of dealing with situation, killing both of them. He suddenly becomes a local hero, his face appears on TV screens, but the quiet diner owner wants nothing more than to continue his ordinary life. However, the sudden discovery of his proficiency in killing starts to change his relationship with his wife and children, who begin to look at him in a completely different light. To make matters worse, a gangster named Fogarty (played by Ed Harris) suddenly starts lurking around Millbrook, claiming he knew Tom by another name.
David Cronenberg built his reputation with films set in ultra-modern, "cool", highly stylized and seemingly perfect worlds beneath whose facade lay the imperfections of characters that manifested themselves through catastrophic consequences. The middle class idyll described in Josh Olson's Oscar-nominated screenplay may not be visually similar, but is very much alike Cronenberg's false utopias.
Although the film can formally be placed within the conventional Hitchcockian framework of stories about ordinary people in unusual situations, or can be understood as an ode to traditional family values, for Cronenberg it represented another, and excellently exploited, opportunity to explore the true essence of human nature, i.e. how thin the line is that divides the "enlightened" and civilised citizen from the bloodthirsty troglodyte. What is particularly praiseworthy about the film is that it allows the audience to draw its own conclusions, which includes the ambiguous ending.
Cronenberg would not have succeeded in this without a truly excellent cast. Mortensen, at the time best known as Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings, is more than convincing as an ordinary man forced to face some unpleasant truths about himself. Similar thing can be said for Maria Bello, who excellently played a rather controversial, even physically demanding role that many of her hyped colleagues would have given up on. Along with Ed Harris in a rather ominous edition, William Hurt is quite good in one of the most unusual roles of his career must also be singled out.
A History of Violence represents a masterful exploration of the duality of human nature, where the veneer of civilisation can be stripped away to reveal the primal violence lurking beneath. Cronenberg's assured direction and the superb performances from the cast make this one of the most compelling and thought-provoking films of the 2000s.
RATING: 9/10 (++++)
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