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| History of Violence, A |
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  (8/10)
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Runtime: 96 |
| Public Rating: 8.72 (29 votes) |
Director: David Cronenberg |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Crime/Drama |
Year: 2005 |
| Writer(s): Josh Olson, John Wagner (graphic novel), Vince Locke (graphic novel), |
| Distributor: New Line Cinema |
| Reviewed by: Mel Valentin |
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Additional review(s) by:
Friday and Saturday Night Critic [4/10] (view).
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Based on the graphic novel by John Wagner and Vince Locke, and directed by David Cronenberg (Dead Ringers, Crash, Spider) from a screenplay by Josh Olson, A History of Violence isn't, as the title suggests, a dry chronicle or tome on the environmental, genetic, social, or cultural causes (with historical examples) of war and warfare throughout the ages. Instead, A History of Violence is part wrenching family drama and part hard-edged crime drama. In its realistic depiction of violence, A History of Violence also points to and critiques our unquestioned, voyeuristic relationship with onscreen violence, in all varieties. A History of Violence also explores, if only partially, the short- and long-term effects an act of self-defense can have on a family and a community.
The prologue foreshadows the unflinching, graphic violence to come while subtly undercutting expectations of how and when violence will be shown. Leland Jones (Stephen McHattie) and Billy Orser (Greg Bryk), amoral, vicious thugs on a crime spree, leave a seedy, semi-deserted motel on a sunny, dusty morning for parts unknown. Before leaving, Leland pays a visit to the motel manager, presumably to square his bill. Cronenberg and his longtime cinematographer, Peter Suschitzky, shoot the opening scene with minimal camera movement or editing, leaving the first violent confrontation offscreen (in a scene that mirrors a much-lauded scene in Steven Soderbergh’s The Limey). In the first clear suggestion the presence or referencing of Western tropes, Cronenberg borrows the first scene payoff from Sergio Leone’s operatic art-Western, Once Upon a Time in the West.
Segue to Millbrook, Indiana, a postcard-perfect rustic town located in the American heartland. Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) lives the “perfect” middle-class American Dream-life. He owns and operates the local diner. He’s husband to Edie Stall (Maria Bello), an attorney, and father to two children, Jack Stall (Ashton Holmes), a socially awkward, put-upon teenager, and Sarah Stall (Heidi Hayes), his six-year old daughter. Typical for an over-bright, rural high schooler (or at least high schoolers in the popular imagination), Jack endures the unwanted attentions of a slick-haired bully (and a mild case of boredom with small-town life). Tom’s semi-idyllic life, of course, is about to be upended with the imminent arrival of Leland and Billy to Millbrook. Desperate for a quick infusion of cash, they spot Tom’s semi-empty diner, moments before it closes. Tom first gives in to the demands of the two men, but it doesn’t take long before events spiral out of control. What occurs next is a template for the subsequent depiction of violence in the film. It’s swift, brutal, graphic, realistic, and disturbing (often all at once). It also acts as a counterpoint to the first scene (where the violence occurs offscreen).
Hailed as a hero by the media and the local community (he’s greeted by cheers and cameras when he leaves a hospital), fame and celebrity follow Tom. Jack’s high-school nemesis taunts him, hoping to humiliate him publicly. More importantly, Tom’s newfound celebrity comes to the attention of Carl Fogarty (Ed Harris), a dangerous-looking gangster from the East Coast (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to be exact) and Fogarty’s well-armed henchmen. Fogarty, it seems, has recognized him from media reports or thinks he has. Fogarty insists on calling Tom by another name, Joey Cusack, and insists Tom was a thuggish, sadistic criminal in his youth (Fogarty has a decidedly personal reason for wanting Tom to be Joey). As Fogarty circles Tom and his family, a show of force seems inevitable (a bloody, nighttime siege straight out of Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs is imaginable here, but A History of Violence takes a different tack, plot wise). Even as Tom hopes to save his family and himself from Fogarty’s wrath, his family begins to express doubts about Tom’s identity.
Who Tom really is, of course, becomes the crucial asked (and eventually answered) in A History of Violence, but not before one or two (or three) plot turns take the narrative in unexpected directions, simultaneously exploring the fissures forming in Tom’s family and his relationship to them and the rippling consequences that flow from Fogarty’s entry into their lives. Structurally, the second-act climax leads to additional complications that, in turn result, in more violence (the last meant to suggest a kind of cleansing or catharsis for Tom). There’s another question that’s asked, but left unanswered in A History of Violence; can a man with a (presumed) violent past find redemption or, at minimum, reacceptance into his family and his community?
If the story and character arcs in A History of Violence remind readers of an American Western, it’s because, at bottom, it is, or rather a contemporary reimagining of the Westerns made in the 1950s and early 1960s (e.g., Bend in the River, Naked Spur, Warlock, The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance). Taken as a whole, the answer they give is an ambiguous, ambivalent one. In some, like Ford’s Westerns, the presumptive hero’s violent acts may be necessary to save family and community, exorcising the more barbaric elements from civil society, but they also mean the presumptive hero is excluded from participating in the life of the community. Others, like Bend in the River suggest that violence, if used for appropriate purposes (i.e., self-defense) can be redemptive and function as a prerequisite for re-entry into the community. It’s to Cronenberg and Olson’s credit that A History of Violence ends on an appropriate ambiguous, ambivalent note.
A History of Violence does, however, have its share of flaws, primarily in the seemingly redundant third-act climax, that substitutes violence for the far more interesting family drama that preceded it, and in several plot turns or elements that betray the occasional heavy hand (e.g., Jack turning the tables on the school bully, meant to signal the genetic link between father, son, and their violent tendencies) and an awkward plot device (the Stall’s apparently have only one car between them) that results in unintended levity as Tom literally races home after he becomes afraid for his family’s safety. Ultimately, A History of Violence betrays its pulpy origins. Story wise,A History of Violence turns on a man haunted by a (presumably) violent past and his efforts to save his family and himself, but even if it fails to be a profound meditation on the nature, causes, or ramifications of violence, it still succeeds in returning the cinematic depiction of violence to the realm of the disturbingly “real,” with all its barbarity, cruelty, sadism, and viciousness intact, instead of the merely entertaining or the aesthetically cathartic that allows for easily dispensable (and forgettable) thrills.
© Mel Valentin, 23rd September, 2005
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