A History Of Violence (2005)

The tale of Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen). Tom is a loving family man and well-respected citizen of a small Indiana town. But when two savage criminals show up at his diner, Tom is forced to take action and thwart the robbery attempt. Suddenly heralded as a hero who took the courage to stand up to crime, people look up to Tom as a man of high moral regard. But all that media attention has the likes of mobsters (Ed Harris and others) showing up at his doorstep, charging that Tom is someone else they've been looking for. Is it a case of mistaken identity or does Tom have a history that no one knows about? Either way, hilarity is about to ensue.

Trivia: The fictitious town that the film is set in (Millbrook, Indiana) is named after the town where the film was actually shot (Millbrook, Ontario, Canada). The scenes set in Philadelphia were actually shot in Toronto, Canada. For the sex scene on the stairs, David Cronenberg was concerned about the two actors getting hurt on the hard wooden steps. He asked his stunt man whether or not he had any stunt pads to soften up the stairs. The stunt man laughed, saying that in the twenty years he had been working as a stunt man, no director had ever asked him for stunt pads for a sex scene. Pads were not used for most of the scene however, and in the shot when Edie is naked on the bed with bruises visible on her back, make-up was used to hide the amount of bruises that Maria Bello received from the scene. During an interview, Viggo Mortensen stated that during the shooting of the first bar scene with Ed Harris he could not stop laughing, and as a result, the scene had to be re-shot several times. Due to Viggo Mortensen's behaviour Ed Harris completed the scene without pants; he only wore his underwear, yet this cannot be seen as the bar table impedes our view. Thus, Viggo Mortensen had to act seriously while Ed Harris was not wearing any pants, and this is the scene that is used in the movie.

By the time you finish reading this post you will probably have spent more time reading then I did watching the movie itself. Now I know you can tell a story in 90 minutes (this was 96) that is sometimes better then a story told in 180 minutes, but this movie seemed to lack something. It was too short. You need to feel sympathy with Tom, but you don't, You are just beginning to understand him when *blink* the movie is over. I also know that David Cronenberg was trying to make a statement about violence following you and destroying your life and stuff like that (at least I think that was what he was saying). It didn't work and this is the reason why, Tom and his family never seemed to be in that much danger. Tom was too efficient in his violence. And what is up with the son, we see a scene at the beginning of the film where he is being bullied by the jock and then in the middle of the film he kicks the jock's tail. (again to point out that violence doesn't solve anything because after the fight he got in trouble with his father). And then...nothing, the storyline was left open ended with no resolution. It is like I started to tell you this important point and then