2008 Woodie Awards
Crime drama gives lesson in violence
By Nick Gligor
Issue date: 10/21/05 Section: Entertainment
What if violence was all that you knew in life? And what if one day you decided to walk away from that life to start a new one? Could you change for the better? Or would you always be that unbalanced, deranged individual, waiting for the day to break free and let loose? David Cronenberg asks his viewers these kinds of questions in his new film, "A History of Violence."
Already a master of violence himself, Cronenberg has masterfully displayed his love for intense, maniacal imagery in the past with cult horror classics like "Scanners", "The Fly and The Brood." "History" is a more of a crime drama or thriller, but the director never once shies away from showing us the gory, brutal details of real life crime.
Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) lives a quiet life in a small, lazy Indiana town running a quaint diner. He is widely known by the locals and in considered to be a very normal guy who's lived there all his life. He's a family man married to lawyer Edie (Mario Bello) and has two kids, the outcast teen Jack (Ashton Holmes) and young daughter Sarah (Heidi Hayes).
Sounds pretty normal, right? Cronenberg does a convincing job for the first part of the film. This soon changes, however, when one of Tom's deepest secrets from the past is brought to the forefront. When two out of town crooks try to stick up the diner, Tom acts quickly to stop them. He takes them both out with such fluid ferocity, that the few people inside look absolutely shocked. Tom is regarded as a hero.
He makes all attempts to avoid the press and get back to normalcy. Unfortunately for him, he should have stayed hidden. He is soon confronted at the diner by Carl Fogarty (Ed Harris) who keeps referring to him as Joey, much to the surprise of Edie. After she and the local sheriff (Peter MacNeill) speculate, it turns out that Tom Stall is actually a man named Joey who was trying to get away from his past life of crime in Philadelphia. Edie had been married to a man who she thought she knew, but didn't. The "everyday guy" image was so believable that even Tom (or Joey) bought it himself.
Already a master of violence himself, Cronenberg has masterfully displayed his love for intense, maniacal imagery in the past with cult horror classics like "Scanners", "The Fly and The Brood." "History" is a more of a crime drama or thriller, but the director never once shies away from showing us the gory, brutal details of real life crime.
Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) lives a quiet life in a small, lazy Indiana town running a quaint diner. He is widely known by the locals and in considered to be a very normal guy who's lived there all his life. He's a family man married to lawyer Edie (Mario Bello) and has two kids, the outcast teen Jack (Ashton Holmes) and young daughter Sarah (Heidi Hayes).
Sounds pretty normal, right? Cronenberg does a convincing job for the first part of the film. This soon changes, however, when one of Tom's deepest secrets from the past is brought to the forefront. When two out of town crooks try to stick up the diner, Tom acts quickly to stop them. He takes them both out with such fluid ferocity, that the few people inside look absolutely shocked. Tom is regarded as a hero.
He makes all attempts to avoid the press and get back to normalcy. Unfortunately for him, he should have stayed hidden. He is soon confronted at the diner by Carl Fogarty (Ed Harris) who keeps referring to him as Joey, much to the surprise of Edie. After she and the local sheriff (Peter MacNeill) speculate, it turns out that Tom Stall is actually a man named Joey who was trying to get away from his past life of crime in Philadelphia. Edie had been married to a man who she thought she knew, but didn't. The "everyday guy" image was so believable that even Tom (or Joey) bought it himself.
