Talk about "A History of Violence" here:
Review by: Breanne Derby
Plot Summary
A History of Violence is based on the graphic novel by John Wagner and Vince Locke. Viggo Mortensen plays a man named Tom Stall who runs a diner in
Millbrook, Indiana, Population 4,000. Tom is the caring father of his two children, a loving husband to his wife, Edie (Maria Bello), and a friendly neighbor to all. The lives of the Stalls are turned upside-down when two brutal serial killers attempt to rob Tom's diner. When the life of a waitress is threatened, Tom takes an action which ends up killing both of the men, and makes him a local and national hero. This heroism puts Tom's face on every TV in America, and draws some unwanted attention. When three mobsters from Philadelphia show up in Tom's diner, harassing him and claiming that he is really a man named Joey Cusack, Tom and his family are put to the ultimate test. Does Tom have a dark and secret past, or is this a potentially lethal case of mistaken identity?
Review
Viggo Mortensen really refuses to let himself be tied down and typecast as the Aragorn type. After the Lord of the Rings trilogy, it would seem as though it would be difficult to be seen by audiences as anything but the character portrayed in the trilogy, but it seems as though many of the main characters have been able to do just that. Elijah Wood did so in Sin City, Orlando Bloom did in Pirates of the Caribbean, and Viggo Mortensen does in A History of Violence.
With a title like "A History of Violence" it's ridiculous to not expect this film to be violent. This wasn't a film purely of blood and gore, but it is definitely not something you will want to see if blood and gore make you queasy. There are several sequences where the camera pauses just a little bit longer on something particularly gory, and if that's not something you can stomach, this is not a film for you.
Throughout the film there were several interesting camera effects. The angles things were shot from were sometimes very unique ones, but never in an absurd way, and it wasn't abused. An example of this is on the film cover, where the photograph is taken from below someone holding a gun, and Tom and Edie can be seen behind it.
This was a very engaging film. The beginning of the film keeps you wondering and trying to figure out whether or not Tom really is Joey, and has been hiding this dark past from his family all along, and the second half shows the family dealing with the trauma of the repercussions of the first half.
Due to it being only an hour and a half long, and because of the audience participation this film demanded, A History of Violence seemed very short, and I wasn't expecting it to end when it did. The lady behind me in the theatre started laughing when it ended. The conclusion of the story is really left up to the viewer, which seems like a cop-out on the writers' parts, but makes for an interesting film.
This film is rated R for violence, language, sexual content, nudity, and some drug use by the Motion Picture Association of America. The drug use is that of two teenagers for a very brief period, the violence is unavoidable, there are two sex-scenes that are purely filler, and Maria Bello walks past the camera naked one time, which was pointless, but all of these things didn't take away from the film as a whole. According to disappointed fans of the graphic novel, there is no sex in the novel, further proving that Hollywood will add sex to anything, because it sells.
Conclusion
All in all, I'd say that this film was fairly good. The best thing about it was how engaging it was. I was on the edge of my seat for nearly the entire thing, trying to figure out what was going to happen next before it did. The film was well created, well put together, and well acted. The plot itself would have seemed somewhat flimsy if the acting and etc. hadn't been so good. I would definitely watch this film again, though I would not recommend it for anyone who is not mature enough to handle its content. The film itself is good because it is so captivating; the theatre was completely silent except for the film; no one talked, no one slurped their soda, and nobody got up and left. This film succeeded in bewitching its audience, and that is what made it entertaining.
