Overall Rating
 Awesome: 44.81%
Worth A Look: 28.42%
Average: 16.39%
Pretty Bad: 3.83%
Total Crap: 6.56%
16 reviews, 87 user ratings
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| History of Violence, A |
by W. Scott Gordon
"We are riveted by Cronenberg's latest bloodfest; Therein lies the problem."
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Based on a graphic novel by John Wagner and Vince Locke, David Cronenberg's "A History of Violence" refers both to the history of one man as well as society’s increasing desensitization to the constant onslaught of media images over the years. Lacking the stylized irony of films like "Pulp Fiction," "Violence" plays it straight while the audience looks on. Whether we are disgusted, thrilled, or both, it is impossible to turn away.The story begins quietly enough, with two gruff men (one gaunt and bearded, the other nondescript) sitting outside of a dusty motel in Anywhere, USA. The bearded one goes in to finish checking out, annoying the other as he takes his time. But he finally does emerge about three minutes later, prompting his impatient friend to ask, “Hey, what took you so long?”
“I had a little trouble with the maid,” the other answers, “but I think it’s all taken care of now.” As the nondescript one goes back in to fill a water bottle, the source of his friend’s “trouble” is painted in sharp crimson relief: everyone in the lobby lies dead, their blood pooling unceremoniously on the fraying carpet. The man fills his water bottle while taking no notice of the carnage around him, clearly accustomed to the business of robbery and murder.
Cut to a sleepy Indiana town where diner owner Tom Stalls (Viggo Mortenson) and his attorney wife (Maria Bello) live a seemingly uneventful, idyllic existence with their two children, an adorable towheaded tyke (Heidi Hayes) and a slightly nerdy high school boy (Ashton Holmes). The audience knows that the chirpy, utterly forgettable music score and whispered nothings like, “I knew the first moment you fell in love with me…a could see it in your eyes” won’t be sustained for long; the moment of truth comes when our erstwhile robber-murderers ride into town and make the mistake of holding up Tom’s diner and try to take hostages. What follows is another display of senseless (and indeed, desensitizing) violence, during which Tom dispatches the killers with practiced ease and saves his terrified friends. His actions are made palatable only because it was clear he was doing the right thing; the townspeople think so too, and make him a hero. But Tom himself is psychologically scarred by the experience: why was he able to kill with such ease? And what does that say about the kind of man he is? At one point he confesses to his son, “I think I may be losing my mind”; a visit from a mysterious figure (Ed Harris), who claims to be part of Tom’s distant past leads everyone, including his wife and son, to begin doubting his sanity.
"Violence" gears up for a payoff, a twist, a revelation about the nature of identity, and ultimately fails. In order to care about Tom’s struggle to discover the truth about himself, we must first sympathize with the person we believe him to be in the first place. Despite Mortenson’s obvious commitment to the role, his unconvincing surroundings hinder this process. Why is it that so many people turn out to greet him as he leaves the hospital, yet he appears to have only one real friend in the entire neighborhood? Why does the town itself switch from a bustling hub of activity to a virtual ghost-town and back, seemingly at the whims of the plot? Tom’s family tapestry, the unraveling of which ought to cause a shock, provokes hardly a tremor. With the exception of Mortenson and Bello’s surprisingly graphic (re: violent) love scenes, during which it is clear that they really dig each other, it is obvious that no one in the family truly knows one another. Although the director may have intended this as a statement on how we may not even really understand those closest to us, the effect is more akin to a group of actors who have never met yet are expected, on cue, to act as a family unit.
If the film failed to address the disturbingly malleable nature of the self and others adequately, it’s take on the nature of violence and society’s increasing distance from it is more successful. As we watch Tom kill the invading robber-murderers, or observe his son finally confront the town bully, we are engaging in a kind of sick wish-fulfillment. The fact that those robbers lie twitching on the floor, one with his jaw blown off, matters less to us than the thrill we receive from knowing that Tom was justified in his actions; we are equally thrilled upon learning that the town bully’s fate. Although we may gasp momentarily at the variously maimed bodies that litter "Violence," the director counts on the fact that we have, through years and years of media conditioning, begun to learn how to divorce such horrible acts from the unimaginable and very real consequences they bring.Thus, he is referring as much to our society’s image driven, gladiatorial past as he does to Tom’s shadowy one. While I cannot say that I enjoyed "Violence," it certainly gave me food for thought.
link directly to this review at https://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=12761&reviewer=406
originally posted: 11/14/05 11:15:19
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USA
23-Sep-2005 (R)
DVD: 14-Mar-2006
UK
N/A
Australia
09-Mar-2006
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