I remember when I first saw A History of Violence in the theaters in 2005. It was not what I was expecting at all. I remember thinking the movie was decent, but not what I expected. 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 beef with his nomination was that he was only in one scene (basically the last scene in the movie). To warrant this kind of acclaim, I felt that 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, and anyone could have played this performance, and it wouldn’t have affected the movie. If anybody deserved a nomination for this movie, it would have been Viggo Mortenson (The Road, Eastern Promises), who, as he always seems to do, hit a home run as this movie’s lead.
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