Sometimes David Cronenberg seems a little crazy. According to his International Movie Database biography, his nickname is "Deprave," and he is known as both "The King of Venereal Horror," and "The Baron of Blood." Kind of makes a person stop and wonder who this man is.
There was a bit of a stigma attached to his most recent directorial effort, "A History of Violence." Would there be gore? Blood? There would obviously be violence, but would it be the unapologetic kind?
The movie begins, strangely lacking in background music, with two criminals checking out of a sleazy motel in the middle of nowhere. They are finished with their business and continue to the next town in order to lie low. A parallel scream then brings the action to small-town Millbrook, Ind., home of the ultimate family: The Stalls. Tom and Edie, along with kids Jack and Sarah, are the kind of family that works together, eats breakfast together every morning and goes to church every Sunday. They are well known and well respected in the town where Tom (Viggo Mortensen, "Lord of the Rings") owns the local diner and Edie (Maria Bello, "Assault on Precinct 13") is a lawyer. Tom and Edie are the ideal parents, while still making time for a healthy sex life. In short, the Stalls have the perfect life.
However, an ordinary day for Tom turns wrong when the two men from the opening scene make their way into his diner. Instead of allowing them to hold up the diner, Tom attacks, stealing the men's guns and killing them both with seemingly practiced ease. Instantly, he becomes a local hero. But the news coverage brings men of a different kind into Millbrook. These three men insist that Tom is really Joey Cusack, a missing mobster from Philadelphia, and they start a chain of events that all but ruin the Stall's idyllic life.
So yes, because the movie involves criminals and members of the mob, there is quite a bit of violence, as the title suggests. The character Tom Stall is probably one of the most effective killers in the movie, often using nothing more extraordinary than a coffee pot to kill his opponents. With significant skill, he overcomes more than three armed men at a time, leaving them battered, beaten and finally, dead.
Mortensen gives an incredible performance. The emotion that shows on his face at any given moment tells as much of the character as the script does, making Mortensen appear to be emotionally invested in Tom. Cronenberg is able to coach a stellar performance from Maria Bello as Edie, who has to deal with as much as Tom does. Edie holds the family together on the outside, while she is dying on the inside, something that Bello expresses perfectly. The supporting cast of Ed Harris, William Hurt, Ashton Holmes and Heidi Hays rounds out the film, each completely carrying his or her own weight.
In the end, Cronenberg lives up to his name very nicely, but he also makes the unapologetic violence and sex tasteful. This lack of censorship seems necessary to the plot, rather than gratuitous. It is definitely a one-of-a-kind film, something one might expect from a director with so many unusual nicknames.
