I recall seeing A History of Violence in theaters for the first time in 2005. It was not what I was expecting at all. The movie was decent, but it didn’t quite live up to my expectations. This was also when I started to get into the Oscars. I remember being flabbergasted when William Hurt (The Doctor, Children of a Lesser God) received a Best Supporting Actor nomination. At that time, my issue with his nomination was that he appeared in only one scene (basically the last scene in the movie). To warrant this acclaim, you needed to be on the screen for more than 15 minutes. As I watched it again (for just the second time ever) last night, I realized that he didn’t deserve the nomination, not because he was only on the screen for 15 minutes, but because his performance sucked. He was such a minor character that anyone could have played this role, and it wouldn’t have affected the movie. If anybody deserved a nomination for this movie, it would have been Viggo Mortensen (The Road, Eastern Promises), who, as he always seems to do, hit a home run as this movie’s lead.
The premise of this movie is straightforward. A Midwestern family named Tom Stall (Mortenson) has a loving wife named Edie (Maria Bello – The Cooler, The Company Men), a teenage son named Jack (Ashton Holmes- Wind Chill, Smart People), and an elementary school-aged daughter (Sarah). He owns his own home as well as a diner, appropriately named Stall’s Diner. Life is great for the Stall family, even though Jack, unbeknownst to his family, is bullied in school. Tom is a genuinely happy man who loves his wife, his job, and his entire lifestyle.
One day, this all changes. Two men that we meet in the very first scene of the movie show up at Stall’s Diner just as Nick is about to close for the night. These two men have killed two people at a roadside motel in the film’s first scene, before one of them goes back into the motel office and shoots dead a slightly older than preschool-aged girl who may have witnessed a crime. Having seen what we saw in the movie’s opening scene, we know that these two men didn’t just stop by the diner for a quick cup of coffee. They are violent men who have it in their DNA to hurt people. A simple robbery will not suffice. Guns are pulled, and the younger of the two men starts to force himself on the young, attractive waitress. Realizing this situation is likely to end with his waitress raped and he and the handful of customers still in the diner murdered, Tom smashes a coffee pot on the man’s head with the glove before shooting the other man dead. When the first man stabs Tom’s foot with a knife, he shoots him dead in the forehead without blinking. It’s almost as if Tom has had some training in killing people before.
When Tom becomes a national sensation as the man who saved others’ lives, his mugshot is plastered over every newscast. It isn’t much longer before Fogarty (Ed Harris – Pollock, The Hours) shows up with two of his henchmen at Stall’s Diner, asking questions and calling Tom by the name of Joey from Philadelphia. Tom steadfastly denies knowing how Fogarty is or why he keeps calling him Joey, but then Fogarty shows his badly scarred eye and says, “You don’t remember doing this with a strip of barbed wire fence back in Philly.” Either Fogarty is badly mistaken, or Tom is not who he claims to be. Fogarty appears convincing, and this is where the movie’s plot lies. Is Fogarty wrong, or is Tom lying?
The difference between my two viewings of the film was that I knew what would happen on my second watch. It changed the experience for me. This is probably a movie most people won’t see more than once. This is a movie most people won’t watch. It received excellent reviews from critics (87%), but I don’t recall it having a significant impact at the box office ($31 million). I did see it in the theaters, and it was a much different movie than I expected. In any case, I had forgotten some of the more minor details, but not the overall story. As I put on the lens of seeing it for the first time, I’d be more likely to recommend it than after a second viewing. After the second viewing, I’d still recommend it if you see a lot of movies, but if you don’t, you could pass. Sure, it’s a tightly wound small-town drama with a bit of mystery, but it is relatively predictable and is a story we’ve all seen played out many times before.
You’d expect the acting to be better than it was. A History of Violence has four A-list stars, but, in my opinion, only Mortensen exceeded my expectations. Bello was pretty good, but Harris was miscast, and, as mentioned, Hurt’s performance was one of the most overrated things I’ve ever seen. The movie can be a tad slow at times, but at the same time, that is what is needed to really build the drama. I never felt like it was too slow, but movies that really build the characters and the setting at the same time are usually the types of movies that I love. Director David Cronenberg (Eastern Promises, The Fly) doesn’t direct many movies, but when he does, he rarely misses. A History of Violence is no exception. It’s a quality-crafted film that isn’t perfect at anything but hits on enough cylinders to make it worth watching. It didn’t make my top 10 list of 2005, but it wasn’t that far outside. If you haven’t seen it, give it a shot.
Plot 8.5/10 (I liked it…it was straightforward and is a story that has been told before, but the slight twist made it feel a little more original to me)
Character Development 7.5/10
Character Chemistry 7.5/10
Acting 7.5/10 (Mortensen rocked…Bello was excellent…Ed Harris (who I usually love) was miscast…and Hurt getting an Oscar nomination was ridiculous)
Screenplay 9.5/10 (screenwriter Josh Olson was nominated for an Oscar for this adapted screenplay)
Directing 8/10
Cinematography 9/10
Sound 7/10 (some cheesy 80’s background music was too prevalent in way too many scenes)
Hook and Reel 9/10
Universal Relevance 9/10 (it can certainly be hard to escape your past sometimes…even many senses of the word)
82.5%
B-
Movies You Might Like If You Liked This Movie
- No Country for Old Men
- Eastern Promises
- Road to Perdition
- Straw Dogs
- The Drop