A History of Violence

The most American movie of 2005 was made in Canada by a Canadian director. A History of Violence isn't just set in America, it is about America and the conflicting faces it presents to the world. Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) is a nice guy, the owner of the local diner, in a loving relationship with his wife Edie, and on good terms with both his kids. This is the kind of guy Jimmy Stewart or Gary Cooper would have played in a Capra film. Joey Cusack is a wild card, capable of killing two men in a matter of seconds and using barbed wire to remove the eye of a bigwig mobster. Basically, he's the kind of guy Joe Pesci would play in a Scorsese film.

Director David Cronenberg has explored conflicted minds in his work before, but the level of active denial that has to go on in the head of this latest protagonist is, without a doubt, unique even among his own rogues gallery of characters like Max Renn in Videodrome or William Lee in Naked Lunch.

When a pair of thrill killers make their way into the diner run by Tom Stall, he saves his own life and the lives of his employees and customers by killing the two men before they have the chance to inflict any harm. His heroism (and efficiency under duress) captures the attention of both the local media and some gangsters on the other side of the country, who are convinced that Tom Stall is actually Joey Cusack, a psychotic mobster who disappeared with a considerable blood debt left unpaid.

It's interesting to see the kinds of design decisions Cronenberg and his longtime art director, Carol Spier, use to create two ends of mythic Americana: the bucolic midwestern small town of Tom's idealized life and the icy, twisting corridors of the mansion belonging to Joey's gangster brother. This is a world that seems to have sprung from 1940s Hollywood (the film itself plays as a noir in many ways) and the innocent way Hollywood sold the idealized story of American life in that period.

All of this may sound like I'm extrapolating a lot of fancy theory in what is, essentially, a very simple and straightforward storyline. But if you listen to the commentary track provided by Cronenberg and the brief featurettes included as bonus materials, you'll see that I'm not just projecting deep meanings on a simplistic genre movie. The director, cast, and crew were all aware of these ideas when they were making the movie.

New Line has given the film itself a perfectly respectable treatment -- the transfer is clear with no defects discernible after a few viewings -- and they've provided a lengthy making-of doc, as well as an informative and dryly entertaining commentary by Cronenberg. But the best feature of all is the thought the movie will inspire after you've finished watching it. -- Christopher Hyatt