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Film review

Indie Flicks: A puzzle wrapped in a good story

By STEVE PERSALL
Published September 29, 2005

A History of Violence (R) (96 min.) - Tom Stall is the nicest guy in his small Indiana town, a family man running a chummy diner. Joey Cusack is a cold-blooded mob monster from Philadelphia. The possibility that these disparate personalities exist in the same person propels the most accessible film of David Cronenberg's career.

Not that A History of Violence is easy to figure out. On the surface, it resembles any number of crime thrillers with dark-suited bad guys terrorizing decent citizens. Dig deeper and it's an interesting study of mistaken - or perhaps manufactured - identity. Go all the way to where Cronenberg points and themes of trust and loyalty emerge, wrapped around Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs lesson that violence is a necessary, inescapable evil. Viewers can find as much or as little as necessary to be fascinated in A History of Violence.

Viggo Mortensen makes an impressive break from Lord of the Rings iconography as Tom (and maybe Joey, although that's a spoiler that won't be broached here). It's a tricky performance whether his character is covering up a double life or expressing genuine confusion that such a claim is being made. Mortensen is matched by Maria Bello (The Cooler) as Tom's wife, Edie, who can't avoid wondering if she really knows her husband of nearly 20 years.

Doubts are raised soon after Tom is forced into a bloody heroic act, when his diner employees and customers are threatened by armed robbers. Tom becomes a media celebrity for his one-man stand against crime, drawing attention from an imposing, disfigured stranger named Carl Fogarty (Ed Harris). Carl claims to know Tom as Joey Cusack, the man who maimed his face with barbed wire, who has unfinished, probably fatal business in Philly.

As gunpowder drama, A History of Violence gets the job done. But considering it only an action flick is shortchanging Cronenberg's vision, derived from a graphic novel by John Wagner and Vince Locke. Action flicks typically aren't concerned with developing the hero's family dynamic to this degree, not only the growing distrust between Tom and Edie, but also the father's rocky relationship with his son (Ashton Holmes). A similar facet is revealed by the arrival of William Hurt in an oddly annoying turn as Joey's brother Richie, who can finally decide if Tom's a doppelganger, a dead man or both.

Cronenberg knows, and the question is so compelling that viewers can get frustrated waiting for the filmmaker to flip a few clues our way. They come in a rush, possibly to prevent scrutiny that might betray some sloppiness. There's enough time for that later, and few films this year have encouraged such contemplation of structure and theme. A History of Violence may require one or two more viewings before realizing just how good it is. B+

- STEVE PERSALL, Times film critic

[Last modified September 28, 2005, 10:06:07]