Rotten Tomatoes: 87%
Metacritic Metascore: 81
IMDB: 7.4

89/100

Release Date: 30 September 2005
Distributor: New Line Cinema
Budget: $32M
Worldwide Gross: $61.3M
Total Film Awards: 37
OSCAR Nominations: 2

Richie Cusack: "Does it work for you? I can't see it working for me. I never got the urge, you know? A lot of great-looking women in the world. I never met one made me wanna give up all the others."

SYNOPSIS: A mild-mannered man becomes a local hero through an act of violence, which sets off repercussions that will shake his family to its very core in this action thriller.

Cronenberg's adaptation of a Wagner and Locke graphic novel places a simple American family man, and his all-American family,…

Oh, that's why it's called A History of Violence. Before today I thought the film is about violent events spanning over a period of time, you know, a history of violence? Violence's history? Nevermind, I'm dumb.

The film? It's alright. Just like how they're selling it -- violent. Didn't know you can fuck up a person's face this bad with only your bare hands. Ed Harris is the boss. Aragorn is the boss's boss. (Everyone in the film seems to call him Tom. Yeah right, you're not fooling anyone. He's Aragorn.) Awesome performances throughout.

I think I should mention that this is my first Cronenberg film and I understand this is his least interesting work. A toned down Cronenberg, yes,…

A couple years ago, this film was firmly in my Top 50. I haven't seen the film for a couple years now, and by the time I did my top 100 Letterboxd list, this was no where in sight. I've decided this film requires a rewatch.

This film is a delight from Cronenberg. It mixes various little film influences together into a great little story. But the film wouldn't work without the acting. Mortensen gives one of his best ever performances as a man with a deeply hidden past identity. Maria Bello is solid with some great acting scenes. Ashton Holmes gives a memorable teen performance as well.
Then you have Ed Harris effortlessly stealing the show, and William Hurt…

Very direct in its approach & unrelenting with its subject matter, A History of Violence concerns Tom Stall, who lives a quiet life with his family & owns a diner in a small town of Indiana. Things are set in motion when one day Tom foils an attempted robbery at his diner, killing the two thugs, & finds unwanted fame n attention from the residents thus becoming the town's local hero overnight. But new men soon arrive in town looking for someone Tom claims to be not. But as the story progresses, we soon find out about Tom's violent past that he had buried years ago.

Loosely based on the 1997 graphic novel of the same name, the film is brilliantly directed by…

Action!: The Many Bodies Of One David Cronenberg

The first part of a two-movies parter starring the brilliant Viggo Mortensen in a film where he shines as a man that walks the thin line between the good and evil of the world, and in the case of this movie more of a broken hero. His performance is what drives and draws the story all the way through and he pulls it up brilliantly. You get to feel for him, but you also get to feel as cheated as his wife (also greatly played by Maria Bello) when the truth of his dark past is unraveled. Especially I love the very last shot of the movie where you are left wondering…

The logical endpoint of Cronenberg's body horror (or, given its full sublimation into the symbolic of Eastern Promises and A Dangerous Method, perhaps more accurately the first of a new phase), A History of Violence dispenses with the extremities of his earlier work for the realistic but no less repellent view of what bullets and knives actually do to the body. Here is a violent film that demystifies cinema violence and the effect it has on sanitizing the culture's view of it by gazing just long enough on torn and seeping flesh to communicate how horrible a wound can be without fetishizing its gore. This moral angle informs the film's story, in which nonviolent de-escalation is seen as craven and…

Damn! I was not expecting that. Cronenberg’s proven track record in everything from body-horror to psychological thriller definitely shows here, but what’s fresh is his ability to deny his own impulses, opting for sudden flashes of albeit hideously graphic gore opposed to his usual foray into unhinged exploitation. This has some of the most realistic injury detail I’ve seen on film, and certainly isn’t for the faint of heart, but it’s the creeping quietness that keeps you biting at your nails. To my surprise, it’s imbued with all the calm technique of films like You Were Never Really Here or even Zodiac, painting an elaborate, Darwinian portrait of human nature and the unresolved fluidity of identity. Viggo Mortensen gives an astoundingly understated…

Full Review at In Review Online

"Not exactly a straight genre film, despite plenty of action, and not an art film, for the same reason, A History of Violence was, and is, emblematic of the American culture that produced it; that is, it is both horrified of and fascinated by the violent conflict that makes up its own narrative, commenting upon and interrogating itself as it unfolds. Critical luminaries like Jonathan Rosenbaum and Kent Jones were quick to point out this dichotomy, while likening the film to both classic Westerns featuring aged gunslingers as well as more contemporary efforts, like Eastwood’s Unforgiven, where the moral and physical cost of vengeance is placed front and center. In the hands of Cronenberg,…