Posted on Monday, October 31, 2005 9:26 PM
General Info
Title:A History Of Violence
Year: 2005
In Short
EverydayVille, USA: a very nice family have a very nice and happy life together (you kinda expect some product placement from some insurance company, right?).. Things change rapidly when two very, very bad men come to town..
The Movie
Visuals
You get the nice images and the very bloody images together as a package, howzthat? Seriously, any movie directed by David Cronenberg will have a certain visual thing happening and in this case it's the subtle use of gore and a very clean style of filming the scenes. The movie's based on a graphic novel (kind of a comic book, but with more emphasis on 'book' and less on 'comic') and some of the characters are visually represented like they've been plucked out of the novel and copied out on the screen (not sure if that was the intention but it caught my eye..).
Plot
You know how you can get tired of all those plot twists halfway or at the end of a movie? I mean, after The Usual Suspects, The Crying Game and others, you kinda get bored with the plot twist, but in this case.. Nice one!!
You kinda predict a lot of things early on in the movie, but after some of the surprises, I just gave up, sat back and enjoyed the flick (like you should, I guess..).
Cast
Very interesting cast:
Viggo Mortensen plays a credible Everyman (Tom Cruise, pay attention and make notes!), even a very believable tormented soul, and the ladies get plenty hunk-moments
Maria Bello doesn't cut it as a mother of a teenager, and the cheerleader bit was kinda.. embarrassing to watch, BUT she sure as hell is more than a nice face, she does her work incredibly well!
Cameos:
William Hurt and Ed Harris.. WOW! Ain't gonna spoil their involvement in the movie, but let's just say that they must've had fun reading the script and must've been very eager to play in the movie..
Conclusion
So, what do we have? A plot that's been done many times before: it's almost a Western. A cast that really work their butts of to deliver an excellent performance. And.. Cronenberg, who likes to do things his way, which doesn't necessarily have to work for me, but in this movie I had a coupla "What?!?" moments. What kinda gets on my nerves are the "Why?!?" moments: scenes taking way too much time to make a point, scenes seemingly put there without adding anything to the story (or maybe I wasn't paying attention and got distracted by the cheerleader thing).
But some scenes are timeless: the intro lasting more than four minutes and some of the violent showdowns, which were incredibly well directed.
A real mixed bag of impressions and opinions about a very, very simple plot: sounds like a Cronenberg movie to me!
3/5