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A History of Violence (film)

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A History of Violence

Promotional poster for A History of Violence
Directed by David Cronenberg
Produced by Chris Bender
JC Spink
Written by Comic Book:
John Wagner
Screenplay:
Josh Olson
Starring Viggo Mortensen
Maria Bello
Ed Harris
William Hurt
Music by Howard Shore
Distributed by New Line Cinema
Release date(s) September 23, 2005
Running time 96 min.
Language English
Budget $32,000,000 (est.)
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

A History of Violence is an Academy-Award nominated 2005 film, directed by David Cronenberg. It is based on the graphic novel of the same name by John Wagner. It stars Viggo Mortensen as the owner of a diner who is thrust into the spotlight after killing two robbers in self-defense. The film was put into limited release on September 23, 2005, in the United States and later, went into wide-release September 30, 2005.

Tagline:

  • Tom Stall had the perfect life... until he became a hero.

Contents

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Tom Stall is a restaurant owner in the small town of Millbrook, who lives with his wife Edie, his son Jack and his daughter Sarah. He becomes a local hero after he defends himself from armed robbers, killing them in the process. When his story receives national attention, several members of the Philadelphia Irish Mafia arrive in town, led by the physically scarred Carl Fogarty. The manipulative Fogarty charges that Tom is someone named Joey Cusack, the man who damaged his face 20 years ago in Philadelphia. Tom denies the allegation, and claims he has never even been to Philadelphia. Fogarty is persistent though, and he threatens the whole family.

Jack, who has always avoided fighting when bullied at school, attacks his tormentors. He is then kidnapped by the mobsters who later exchange him for his father. Tom kills several gangsters in a scuffle, nearly getting killed himself. However, Jack intervenes, saving Tom's life by shooting Fogarty in the back with a shotgun. In the fight, Tom confirms that he is in fact the missing Joey Cusack. Upon hearing this his family becomes upset and angry that he lied to them for so many years. But when the sheriff starts to believe the mobsters' claim of Tom's criminal past, Edie defends Tom, saying that the sheriff should stop imagining things.

Richie Cusack, Tom's brother who is a Philadelphia crime boss, demands that "Joey" visit him. Tom fears that his brother plans to kill him, but knows that his family will remain at risk if he does not respond. He drives to Philadelphia to meet his brother at a secluded estate. Richie orders one of his men to kill his brother. This ends in a surprisingly fast sequence in which Tom quickly kills all of Richie's men, and Richie himself.

Tom then returns to his family, who are all sitting down to have dinner. He receives a silent welcome to a tense atmosphere. The film ends with the question of their reaction unanswered.

[edit] Adaptation

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The film is only loosely based on the original graphic novel. Screenwriter Josh Olson intended from the very beginning to use the original story as a springboard to explore the themes that interested him, and Cronenberg admitted that he did not even know the screenplay was an adapted work until he had seen Olson through several drafts. The diner scene that sets the story in motion is nearly identical, and the basic cast of characters remains largely unchanged. But the particulars of the plot are very different, especially as the story progresses.

The protagonist's name is changed from Tom McKenna to Tom Stall; John Torrino becomes Carl Fogarty, Tom's son Buzz becomes Jack, his daughter Ellie becomes Sarah, and Sheriff Carney's first name goes from Frank to Sam. The town in which the story takes place is changed from River's Bend, Michigan to Millbrook, Indiana, and the origin of the mobsters is changed from Brooklyn to Philadelphia. According to the German press kit, David Cronenberg and screenwriter Josh Olson changed the Italian-sounding names because they did not want the audience to anticipate Tom's Mafia ties too early in the film. In the film's audio commentary, Cronenberg says that Joey and Richie were Italian in Olson's screenplay, which he changed because Viggo Mortensen and William Hurt would not make convincing Italians, and he wanted to to keep the film away from "the Sopranos Syndrome."

Much of the story of the graphic novel is a lengthy flashback detailing Tom's falling out with the mob. While the film is completely sequential and makes only a brief and vague allusion to the trouble Tom caused as mob member, the graphic novel details at length a heist perpetrated by Tom against the mob. Olson and Cronenberg opted to focus on Tom's struggles against his past and his relationship with his family, largely to the exclusion of the details of his falling out with his brother and the Mafia.

The most profound alterations of the original novel's plot concern the character of Richie and his fate. The two "versions" of this character are so different that the film version can barely be said to be based on the graphic novel. In the comic book, he and Tom are childhood friends; while in the film they are brothers (they weren't brothers in Olson's original screenplay; Cronenberg changed them to brothers to give their relationship more resonance). In the novel, Richie is captured by mobsters and mutilated after the incident that sends Tom on the lam: Richie's limbs are cut off and his eye taken out, yet he is still kept alive to be suspended from the ceiling in a harness and tortured for years. During the dramatic climax of the graphic novel Tom comes face to face with Richie, and Tom suffocates him in an act of mercy. In the film, Richie is Tom's brother, and a mob boss who tries to have Tom killed only to be shot in retaliation.

While in the comic, Tom's family is supportive and completely understanding, the film has his loved ones struggle with the startling truth about Tom. The lengthy subplot concerning his son Jack turning to violence after his father's example did not exist in the comic, nor does the emotionally charged fight (and subsequent rough sex on the stairs) between Tom and Edie. In the comic, Torrino is shot by Edie, but in the movie, Fogarty is killed by Jack. The comic concludes with Tom violently defeating the mobsters that haunted him, whereas the movie ends with Tom's silent return to his family; a change that drastically shifts the tone of the film.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Interpretation

The film's title plays on multiple levels of meaning. David Cronenberg suggests three possibilities: "(1) to a suspect with a long history of violence; (2) to the historical use of violence as a means of settling disputes, and (3) to the innate violence of Darwinian evolution, in which better-adapted organisms replace those less able to cope," with the last as the dominant focus of the movie.

The movie plays upon the themes of the harm and necessity of violence. Tom, the seemingly mild mannered diner owner, survived the initial attack because he killed the perpetrators. The very instincts that he walked away from saved his life. Is the violent instinct necessarily an evil? The movie clearly suggests that Tom has an instinctive, virtuosic ability to act with violence. Intimidation does not freeze him, and firepower does not intimidate him. He knows how to respond to violence with violence instinctively; clearly, this saves him multiple times.

Thematic similarities between the film and the works of Sam Peckinpah have been much commented on: in an interview, Cronenberg did not deny this but also emphasized that there were significant differences both in terms of plot and style.

[edit] Cast

Actor Role
Viggo Mortensen Tom Stall / Joey Cusack
Maria Bello Edie Stall
Ed Harris Carl Fogerty
William Hurt Richie Cusack
Ashton Holmes Jack Stall
Heidi Hayes Sarah Stall
Stephen McHattie Leland Jones
Greg Bryk Billy Orser
Peter MacNeill Sheriff Sam Carney

[edit] Awards and nominations

[edit] Movie details

  • DVD:
Widescreen edition
March 14, 2006

[edit] Related links

[edit] Filming

Most of the movie was shot in Millbrook, Ontario, Canada) [1].

[edit] External links


Movies by David Cronenberg
Transfer • From the Drain • Stereo • Crimes of the Future • Shivers • Rabid • Fast Company • The Brood • Scanners • The Dead Zone • Videodrome • The Fly • Dead Ringers • Naked Lunch • M. Butterfly • Crash • eXistenZ • Spider • A History of Violence
de:A History of Violence

fr:A History of Violence (film) it:A History of Violence hu:Erőszakos múlt nl:A History of Violence no:A History of Violence ru:Оправданная жестокость (фильм) fi:A History of Violence (elokuva) sv:A History of Violence (film)

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