"No good deed goes unpunished."Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) has a simple country life, running a diner in a small Indiana town and living in a house surrounded by fields. But it all changes for him when two maniacs step into his diner and he is forced to defend his customers and himself. In the media frenzy that follows he gets a visit from a trio of Philadelphia mobsters led by a magnificent Ed Harris. These man insist that Tom is a mafia killer who had been in hiding for the last couple decades.
A History of Violence is filled with suspense and mystery and seems like a hybrid between a Hitchcock film and a Frank Capra film. It's kind of like It's a Wonderful Life in Hell. Stall is never really threatened outright, yet he is. David Cronenberg delivers a tightly packaged thriller that could have been packed with another hour to give it a David Lean feel, but he doesn't and makes a film that is smoother than what other directors would have done.
You may go in expecting Death Wish, but this isn't your typical, cliched film. It's a surprising piece that works well with its material and its cast.
No comments:
Post a Comment