A History of Violence

A History of Violence is a tightly controlled thriller, and we recommend it with one reservation: its plotting is sometimes simpler than its people. David Cronenberg takes Tom Stall’s apparently perfect life and the heroism that upsets it seriously enough for both to matter. We can understand why a family might take pride in a man suddenly regarded as a hero, and why his violence might trouble a marriage. The film has room for both reactions within its 96 minutes.

Viggo Mortensen makes Tom’s ordinariness convincing without making him blank. His restraint lets us keep looking, rather than waiting for the actor to announce what we should think. Maria Bello’s Edie has enough warmth and independence for their closeness to feel established before it comes under strain. We were more upset by that strain than we expected. Bello makes the loss of ease between Edie and Tom feel painfully familiar.

Peter Suschitzky photographs the violence with a clarity that makes it difficult to enjoy without noticing the damage. The injuries register as damage to a person. Carol Spier’s production design makes the family surroundings feel reassuring, giving us something we can understand Tom wanting to preserve. The domestic setting needs to hold our attention, because the threat to this family’s happiness has to matter as much as the physical danger.

Ronald Sanders’s editing gives the action momentum without letting it become a blur. We get the excitement, then enough opportunity to consider what has excited us. Howard Shore’s score helps maintain that unease, leaving room for the performances to do their work. Cronenberg also allows humour into the film, which keeps it from becoming relentlessly solemn about violence and makes its changes in mood harder to anticipate.

Josh Olson’s screenplay is less persuasive when it makes the questions surrounding violence too easy to sort out. Its directness suits a short thriller, but the writing occasionally settles for answers where the performances suggest there should be further trouble. Ed Harris gives Carl Fogarty enough force to prevent the crime story from feeling like an illustration of a point. Even so, some of the plotting is too neat for the distress Bello is playing.

The film makes sense alongside Westerns in which a man’s capacity for violence earns him a place in a community. Cronenberg understands the attraction of that arrangement, and the action works well enough that we feel it ourselves. He also takes seriously the less flattering question of what such a man might be like to live with. That keeps the film close to Tom and Edie even when its subject could encourage a more general lecture about American life.

The 18 certificate is worth taking seriously, even for those comfortable with crime thrillers. The physical detail of the violence is disturbing, and the marital pain offers little respite from it. Watch it when there is time afterwards to talk about the marriage.