Viggo Mortensen and Maria Bello in David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence directed by David Cronenberg. I’ve liked Viggo Mortensen since wacthing Hildalgo. He’s got a solid screen presence. Unassuming. In the film, a pair of criminals attempt to kill a coworker in Tom’s (Mortensen’s) diner. Tom, surprising to everyone, saves the day by killing them gangster style. Unfortunately for Tom, this attracts the attention of Carl Fogarty, a gangster who swears that Tom is Joey, the gangster who gave him his sever facial scar some years ago. This opens up a can of very deadly worms.

The meat of the movie, what keeps you watching, is that you don’t know whether Tom is Joey. Tom denies to Carl, his wife and even the sheriff that he is Tom and not Joey. Mortensen has this quality about him as an actor in that his subtle expressions work so his characters only ever seem one way, but can always go the other way. So, you never know what to believe, but you’re not frustrated because it’s nothing to do with bad writing. You’re not supposed to know, until you’re allowed to know. And when you do know if Tom is really Joey or not, the plot unfolds still subtlely even with Cronenberg’s signature scenes of gruesome violence. Cronenberg’s films start tempered and remain so throughout. They are also peppered with bursts of violence. That’s his thing. And it works just as well in A History of Violence as it has in all his other films. You get this erie sense of something ominous looming. And when the darkness falls and errupts in gruesome violence, the calm aftermath is so quick to happen, you wonder if anything happened at all. That is, until you see the bloody evidence of the darkness when you look around a bit more. Rent it!

Other notable David Cronenberg films:
• The Fly: a classic, a little dated, but worth renting
• Dead Ringers: Jeremy Irons makes this film notable
• Madame Butterfly: again, Jeremy Irons makes this film notable
• Crash (1996): disturbing, erotic and defintely worth bumping up on your Netflix queue
• Spider: Ralph Fiennes is good, but the film drags a bit
• Videodrome: Cronenberg’s classic, distrubing, not for the weak