FrancisPage

Reel To Reel:
A History Of Violence

How It Rates: ****
Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello, Ed Harris, William Hurt
Rated: R
Red Flags: Graphic and intense violence, graphic sexuality, language (nearly an NC-17)

A History Of Violence is the best film I've seen this year. It is film noir in color. It is Greek tragedy in midwestern America. It is Hitchcock in blue jeans and pick-up trucks.

Tom Stall (Mortensen) is a small-town diner owner, a quiet man with a loving wife and two kids, a gentle soul living the red-state life of family values. But then two hoodlums with a sizable track record pick the wrong diner to stick up. Like a beast unchained, Stall foils the robbery in a bloody outburst.

Suddenly Tom is a hero. Reporters flood the town. Everyone's talking except Stall, a man who doesn't want to be thought of as a hero. And there may be a good reason why. Three mob tough guys show up in town. They're looking for somebody named Joey, an old whacker from the past. They think Tom's him. Tom says he's not that man, and most of us would believe that. But one thing still sticks out among the strangers in the black sedan -- how did Tom kill the two hoods in that robbery so efficiently? I'll stop here, because the suspense of this movie rests on whether Tom is really some closet gangster or simply the wrong man in the right town.

Director David Cronenberg paces the movie in brooding stretches interspersed with fits of rage, graphic and uncensored leaving little to the imagination, which only underscore the brutality. Tom certainly is good with a gun, but he comes off as no action hero. Here is a man trapped with another component of his personality which pops out like the Incredible Hulk without the green muscles or stretch pants. And without giving anything away, the film's final scene is a classic.

(Side note: when is Hollywood going to get beyond the stereotype scenes of TV reporters saying something to the effect of "I'm standing at the house of so-and-so..." and then going up to somebody, live on tape, and asking, "How do you feel?" I challenge screenwriters to spend a day with a real TV news crew -- and I don't mean those folks in L.A. -- and get a feel for how the job really works.)