A History Of Violence
(dir. David Cronenberg)
Smalltown family man and all-round good guy Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) has a hidden past. It is so well hidden that not even his wife and teenage son know about it. So well hidden in fact, that not even Tom himself is sure whether it really happened. However, gangster Carl Fogarty (Ed Harris) is absolutely sure of the facts, one being that he now only has one eye, which is a pretty constant reminder. So when Carl and a couple of goons come to town, it's time for Tom to get out of the comfort zone and face up to what he did or possibly didn't do.
At around 90 minutes, it's a good length for it's short story feel, striking a balance between tension and action. With it's name in the title, the violence, when it appears, is short, sharp and particularly brutal and the gradual unravelling of the family unit as the truth comes to the surface is nicely weighted.
Performances are good, although I haven't seen enough yet of Mortensen to know if he was asked to look a bit demented in this film or whether that's his stock face. William Hurt can lose several points for being a bit camp and just a bit too crap for the end-of-film bad guy.
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