A manhunt of staggering proportions plays out in David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence. When family man Tom Stall’s uninteresting small town life is upended by an attempted robbery and a group of Philadelphian mobsters, his past, or someone else’s, comes back to haunt him.
Stall, played by Viggo Mortensen, runs a humble diner in Millbrook, Ind. and spends most of his time with his wife and two children. Then, two men enter his diner after closing and disrupt his average life. Their demands quickly escalate from black coffee to cash. When a waitress’ life is threatened, Stall stealthily cracks the first man in the face with a glass coffee pot and, after being stabbed in the foot, manages to blow the other through the glass door with the robbers’ own guns. Cronenberg captures every gruesome detail with intense, up-close footage that makes it hard to swallow one’s popcorn.
A History of Violence is a psychological thriller that only becomes more intricate as the storyline progresses. The beginning is an almost too slow-motion portrayal of Stall’s modest life and happy home. After the night at the diner makes Stall a hometown hero, however, the movie takes a sharp turn into bizarre accusations and false alarms. The plot is a complex entanglement of lies and cover-ups, as the characters attempt to reveal the true identity of Joey Cusack, a man formally associated with and wanted by the mob.
The audience witnesses the extremes a man would go to in defense of his family and his integrity as Stall finds himself in a bloody battle to keep his past buried for another 18 years. The explicit sex scenes between Stall and his wife, played by Maria Bello, help exhibit the deterioration of the couple’s relations over the course of the film. When Stall’s son Jack is suspended from school for violent behavior, we see that Stall’s problems have rippled out to affect the most unintended aspects of his life.
Everything that seems to be straightforward in A History of Violence proves itself to be exactly otherwise. The audience becomes just as confused and astounded as the characters are while the alternate reality of Joey Cusack begins to consume Millbrook.
The movie will trigger countless contrasting emotions all at once, but the sensation is satisfying. When you realize that Tom Stall’s ominous past could go unknown for so long, uncomfortable questions start to come up about the person sitting next to you.
