Screenwriter: Josh Olsen
Stars: Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello, John Hurt, Ed Harris
Trailer link
IMDb page
Hype or die:
As a film buff who has heard a lot of great things about David Cronenberg but never actually seen any of his films, my expectations for "A History of Violence" were higher than I am happy to admit. Hype, no matter if it is negative or positive, is often one of the main reasons why some movies completely miss the mark for me, and in case of this film, I half expected it to be one of the best movies I was ever going to see. On all the movie forums, websites, podcasts and youtube channels I frequently go to, Cronenberg is praised as one of the very best existentialistic filmmakers out there, and one of the most thematically talented directors as well. On top of that, I have heard film critiques say that Viggo Mortensen's performance in this particular film is on par with Marlon Brando's performance in "On the Waterfront" and Robert De Niro's performance in "Taxi Driver". With all this taken into account, it is pretty safe to say that my expectations for A History of Violence were completely off the charts.
The american dream gone wrong:
Mortensen's character, Tom Stall, is a gentle and friendly restaurant owner who lives in a small american town with his wife and two kids. He works hard to support his loving family through honest labour, he is well known and respected in the local community, and he generally seems to have everything going for him. Sadly, this peace is broken when two criminals just happen to drop by his restaurant one night. The robbers threaten to kill one of Tom's employees, to which he responds by shooting both of them in an act of self defense. To his own distaste, this incident turns him into a local hero. No matter how hard he tries to avoid talking about the event, the media will not let his story rest, and he ends up becoming a true overnight sensation. This attention draws all kinds of people to Tom's restaurant from all over the country, and when one particular person with ties to his past shows up and claims that our protagonist is not who he says he is, his entire way of life comes very close to collapsing into a chaos of blood, murder and deceit.
Expectation is the root of all heartache:
In spite of my high hopes for the movie and huge respect for Viggo Mortensen as an actor, A History of Violence immediately triggered a bad nerve for me. I got a feeling that I was not going to like where it was going as soon as Tom's daughter showed up on screen, and it sadly did not take long before this suspicion was fully confirmed. Given all the good things I had heard prior to watching it, I was complete taken aback by the (in my opinion) sloppy and almost amateurish dialogue and the beyond generic course of storytelling that this movie features, and this feeling of unprofessionalism and incompleteness stayed with me for the entirety of the movie's running time. I know that this is not the popular opinion about the film, and I am aware that I just pissed off a lot Cronenberg fans, but I have to be honest here. To me, this movie felt like a cheap made-for-TV movie from beginning to end.
A less than overwhelming script:
As mentioned, the dialogue in A History of Violence felt poor from the very beginning. I found it extremely predictable and almost gutwrenchingly generic most of the time, especially when it came to the daughter and the son, and the script in itself felt very cliched and uninspired as a whole. For an example, the film features the single most stereotypical and overdone portrayal of the classic high school bully I have seen in my entire life. No matter how much you might disagree with me on my over all thoughts about the film, I do not think that anyone who has actually seen the movie will disagree with me on this. This guy basically has all the traits of any high school jackass put to film since the invention of the video camera; he is arrogant, he picks on the the protagonist's kid because he defeated him in a game of baseball, he is unintelligent and loud mouthed, he sports the classic combed back hairstyle, he drinks and drives, he humiliates the son in public, and ends up getting his ass kicked because of his bad behaviour. However, the absolute worst thing about this character is that he adds nothing to the plot at all. The only thing he is good for is making the audience do a lot of toe-cringing, face-palming and teeth-clenching.
"I see all this potential, and I see it squandered":
In terms of the actual story of Tom Stall's unwanted fame, his ambiguous past and the trouble that killing those two guys in the restaurant causes him, I actually do see how it could have been interesting. All stories deserve to be told in my opinion, and if done right, even the most generic set of overused plot devices and most uninspired story arcs have the potential to become something worth watching. Nicholas Winding Refn's "Drive", my personal favourite movie of all time, is a brilliant example of this. Had Drive been made by any other director, it might very well have turned into yet another stale, high octane, Jason Statham transporter-type movie, but because of Refn's vision and creativity, it turned into one of the best movies of recent memory instead. The way I see it, A History of Violence had the opportunity to do something similar. As it stands though, it remains utterly common, unimaginative, uninventive and chastised in my opinion, and its waste of potential and disappointing nature is my biggest gripe about it as whole.
My final thoughts:
Even though I have only talked about the stuff that I did not appreciate, A History of Violence does a have a few slightly redeeming qualities to it. I never found it downright boring, Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello and John Hurt all portray their characters quite well, and the final scene is actually somewhat intriguing and well structured. As a whole though, there are simply way too many disappointing aspects in this film for me to say that I like it. I do realize that a lot of people absolutely love this movie, and even though I have done my best to conduct my criticism of it in a respectable and unhateful manner, I am well aware that a lot of readers might still find this review offensive. I will not apologize for my point of view, by rest assured that I did not set out to offend anyone by writing this blog post. I wanted to love Cronenberg's A History of violence with all my heart, so much so that I bough it on Blu-Ray without having even seen it, and it pains me to say that I was severely let down. In my opinion, A History of Violence had a lot promise, but ended up completely empty handed due to poor execution and lackluster writing.
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