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A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE (2005)
Director: David Cronenberg. Hacktors: Viggo Mortensen, Ed Harris, William Hurt, Maria Bello. Rating: 
The lowdown: The king of Canadian horror returns with a surprisingly mainstream effort, at least by his wonderfully oddball standards. A History Of Violence is probably his most accessible film since 1988's Dead Ringers. Mortensen is Tom Stall, a decent pillar of a smalltown community, dispensing coffee and pie to his loyal diners. One day, peace is shattered when two killers attempt to rob his little corner of the world and Tom's life is changed, seemingly forever. Good points: The first half of A History Of Violence is wonderfully unpredictable. You'll find no major spoilers in this review (we generally don't run them, anyway) because part of the joy of the film is the not-knowing and the element of surprise. Somewhere around the two-thirds mark, the script's direction becomes clearer, but up until then, this is one tense slow-burner, punctuated by sudden bloody outbursts. Mortensen is excellent as Stall and is surrounded by a uniformly excellent cast - Ed Harris is particularly frightening as a glass-eyed, scar-faced mobster. The titular violence, when it erupts, is breath-taking, with some amazing prosthetic gore. Here, we especially salute Cronenberg: it would have been easy to have made A History Of Violence a lot less explicitly unpleasant, in a bid to not churn the casual cineplex vistor's stomach. Thankfully, the man doesn't hold back. Talk about your short, sharp adrenaline rush... Bad points: A History Of Violence clearly isn't a horror film, if that's what you're craving from Cronenberg (it's extremely brutal, however, and is a film about the horrors which man inflicts on his fellow man) and may be too slow and considered for some. The cinematic theme of identity - and particularly secret identity - is well-worn by now, and the 'twist' barely registers as a twist at all (to his credit, Cronenberg doesn't present it as a slam-bang 'Wow, this is shocking, isn't it?!' moment). Apart from that, I'm hard pressed to criticise. Overall: A brilliant piece of work, coming as a real relief after the depressing plod of 2002's Spider. David Cronenberg still has it - even if you'd be hard-pressed to identify this as a Cronenberg film if you didn't know... Release Date: In the US, there's a limited theatrical release from September 23, 2005. In the UK, it's September 30. [Home] © Copyright Slasherama 2002-present |