A History of Violence
Tom Stall is your everyday worker. He does his job, loves his family and pays his taxes just like every other American. But after he gets into a situation at his work that makes him save the lives of the people around him by killing two gangsters, he finds himself being questioned by a group of mobsters as to who he really is. He says he is the man who has lived with his wife for the past 20 years, and they say he is the man who took their boss’ eye. So the question is, who is he? Viggo Mortensen plays Tom Stall alongside Maria Bello as his wife Edie. They both do great jobs with this movie and play their parts as well as is possible. It is an almost flawless film that captivates the audience and makes for a great movie that I would recommend for those who don’t mind seeing gory violence, nudity, and don’t mind hearing curse words. I give A History of Violence an 8 out of 10.
Viggo Mortensen has really become one of those actors where I am willing to see whatever he is in after the Lord of the Rings trilogy. He has learned how to pick roles and the public loves him, so he is not hurting for roles as Hollywood keeps calling him. In this movie, I truly can not think of a better person to play this role. He has the athletic build that makes him believable that he could have been able to take on these bad guys in the coffee shop and take them down. But he is realistic enough where the audience can find a certain amount of kinship with his character. He truly becomes this character and lets himself become the person you see on the screen. His role is great.
When I saw the name Maria Bello, I could not for the life of me think of what it was that she was in that I would recognize. So I looked at her profile on IMDB and saw that she was in Payback, and then it clicked, she was the woman from Payback. It all makes sense now. So now that that is taken care of. This girl has some really quality acting chops. She makes you look at her everytime she is on the screen. Not only is she an attractive woman, but her presence on screen is impressive.
Ed Harris is the king of finding supporting, effective roles. He is rarely the lead character, but you always remember his performance in the role he takes. I was more than a little disappointed that he wasn’t used more in this movie. Overall, I would say that he has a total of 15 minutes of screen time the entire film. Now, that isn’t saying that his part is thrown to the side. Without his character, the story goes nowhere. He is the catalyst for the entire story, but with him being on the main poster for the movie, you kind of expect the movie to feature him. But he does a standup job on his character who I would not want to meet in a dark alley. I don’t know if the way he speaks in the movie is the way that people from his area actually speak, but it is cool and I keep finding myself saying "Bad Men" in the way that he does just because it sounds so cool.
The rest of the performances are just what you would expect in some ways and not so much in others. The actors don’t act as much as you would expect, instead you don’t think about them acting. You think about their characters and not their performances, which is what you want a good actor to do. They let you get drawn into this world and experience these events alongside them. There are a few spots where you notice it, but not because of the acting, instead because of the writing and it being a little bit hokey or expected. Keep in mind that this story is contrived from a comic book graphic novel. So that is where some of the writing comes from. Now, I say that only to say that there is an air of comic book feeling to the movie. It is not the same type of feel as superman or spiderman, but more along the lines of batman and darker, more realistic storylines. You know that this is an extraordinary situation, but there is also a feeling of realness to it that keeps you wondering if this could really happen.
There are a few points that I want to let you know about so that you can think about them when you see the film. The opening scene in the family’s house is extremely hokey. It is like Wally and the Beav came to visit Mayberry alongside Ozzie and Harriet. I mean, extremely hokey, and it took me some time to figure out why they did it that way, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. And before I go into it, get ready for some religious parallels.
What they were doing was showing that this was a perfect family. They were happy, loving, and exactly what you would want your family to be. Everything for this family was black and white, either good or bad. But after some things change and they let just a little bit of black in to make an area of grey, the line between good and bad begins to blur. Then it is harder to figure out what is okay and what is not. After they are put into the situation where they have to choose between the right way and the wrong way, they find it harder and harder to choose the right way. Do you see the parallels of our christian lives? Just checking.
Then there is the goriness of the fight scenes. They were very realistic. There are a couple of scenes where the mangled faces of a couple of the guys really grosses you out. But they are the way that I would imagine it would actually look if the things happened to these guys. They were extremely quick too which made you wonder if this guy did have a background in killing people. It is not the same type of quick as Bourne Supremacy where you can’t tell what is going on, instead you see every punch and every shot in a way that almost startles you into believing the character.
There is also some nudity. Maria Bello apparently has no problem showing off what God gave her. Because she is fully nude once and partially another time. She is beautiful, and it is well done in one part where it is realistic, but another spot is completely out of nowhere unless I am not analyzing that scene enough to get the symbolism. Then there is also a sex scene where I see more of Viggo than I ever wanted to see. Don’t worry, no male frontal nudity, just barely.
So it is not a movie I would ever, ever, ever take kids to, but it is an amazing film that I think a lot of people will enjoy if they let themselves see it and don’t shy away from the title and the rating. It was extremely good and I would recommend it to most people. So I give A History of Violence an 8 out of 10.
Totally agree, it was very good, but not family friendly in the slightest.
But you know, sometimes the world is not either eh…