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''A History of Violence'' is a 2005
action thriller film The action film is a film genre that predominantly features chase sequences, fights, shootouts, explosions, and stunt work. The specifics of what constitutes an action film has been in scholarly debate since the 1980s. While some scholars such as D ...
directed by
David Cronenberg David Paul Cronenberg (born March 15, 1943) is a Canadian film director, screenwriter, producer and actor. He is a principal originator of the body horror genre, with his films exploring visceral bodily transformation, infectious diseases, and ...
and written by Josh Olson. It is an adaptation of the 1997 DC
graphic novel A graphic novel is a self-contained, book-length form of sequential art. The term ''graphic novel'' is often applied broadly, including fiction, non-fiction, and Anthology, anthologized work, though this practice is highly contested by comics sc ...
by John Wagner and
Vince Locke Vincent Locke () is an American comic book artist known for his work on '' Deadworld'' and ''A History of Violence'' and for his ultraviolent album covers for death metal band Cannibal Corpse. Biography Locke began work in 1986 illustrating '' ...
. The film stars
Viggo Mortensen Viggo Peter Mortensen Jr. (; born October 20, 1958) is an American actor and filmmaker. He has received nominations for three Academy Awards, three BAFTA Awards, and four Golden Globe Awards. Mortensen made his film debut with a small role in ...
,
Maria Bello Maria Bello (born April 18, 1967) is an American actress and producer. Her first major film role was in 1998's '' Permanent Midnight''. She followed this with a range of supporting and leading parts in films such as '' Payback'' (1999), '' Coyot ...
,
Ed Harris Edward Allen Harris (born November 28, 1950) is an American actor and filmmaker. His performances in '' Apollo 13'' (1995), '' The Truman Show'' (1998), '' Pollock'' (2000), and '' The Hours'' (2002) earned him critical acclaim and Academy Awa ...
, and
William Hurt William McChord Hurt (March 20, 1950 – March 13, 2022) was an American actor. For his performances on stage and screen, he received various awards including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, and a Cannes Film Festival Award for B ...
. In the film, a diner owner becomes a local hero after he foils an attempted robbery, but has to face his past enemies to protect his family. ''A History of Violence'' premiered in competition for the
Palme d'Or The (; ) is the highest prize awarded to the director of the Best Feature Film of the Official Competition at the Cannes Film Festival. It was introduced in 1955 by the festival's organizing committee. Previously, from 1939 to 1954, the festiv ...
at the
2005 Cannes Film Festival The 58th Cannes Film Festival took place from 11 May and ran until 22 May 2005. Serbian filmmaker Emir Kusturica served as jury president for the main competition. Cécile de France hosted the opening and closing ceremonies. Belgian filmmakers D ...
and was put into a limited release in the United States on September 23, 2005, followed by a wide release on September 30, 2005. It has been described as one of the greatest films of the 2000s and has been named on various greatest of all time lists. The film was praised for its performances, screenwriting and atmosphere. William Hurt was nominated for the
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor The Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor is an award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It has been awarded since the 9th Academy Awards to an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance in ...
, and Olson was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay. Mortensen himself praised it as "one of the best movies
e's is a Japanese shōnen manga series written and drawn by Satoru Yuiga. It was originally serialized in '' Monthly GFantasy'' from 1997 through 2005, and later published in 16 ''tankōbon'' volumes by Square Enix from March 18, 2003, to Febr ...
ever been in, if not the best". It is also notable as being one of the last, if not the last, major Hollywood films to be released on
VHS VHS (Video Home System) is a discontinued standard for consumer-level analog video recording on tape cassettes, introduced in 1976 by JVC. It was the dominant home video format throughout the tape media period of the 1980s and 1990s. Ma ...
.


Plot

Tom Stall is a diner owner who lives in the rural town of Millbrook,
Indiana Indiana ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Michigan to the northwest, Michigan to the north and northeast, Ohio to the east, the Ohio River and Kentucky to the s ...
, with wife Edie, teenage son Jack, and daughter Sarah. One night, two
spree killer A spree killer is someone who commits a criminal act that involves two or more murders in a short time, often in multiple locations. There are different opinions about what durations of time a killing spree may take place in. The United States ...
s attempt to rob the restaurant. When a waitress is threatened, Tom deftly kills both robbers with skill and precision. He is hailed as a hero and the story is picked up by the national
news media The news media or news industry are forms of mass media that focus on delivering news to the general public. These include News agency, news agencies, newspapers, news magazines, News broadcasting, news channels etc. History Some of the fir ...
. Soon after, Tom is visited by
Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...
-based
mobster A gangster (informally gangsta) is a criminal who is a member of a gang. Most gangs are considered to be part of organized crime. Gangsters are also called mobsters, a term derived from '' mob'' and the suffix '' -ster''. Gangs provide a level ...
Carl Fogarty, who alleges that Tom is actually a former mob
hitman Contract killing (also known as murder-for-hire) is a form of murder or assassination in which one party hires another party to kill a targeted person or people. It involves an illegal agreement which includes some form of compensation, moneta ...
named Joey Cusack. He vehemently denies this, but Carl remains persistent and begins to stalk the Stall family. Under pressure from him and his newfound fame, Tom's relationship with his family becomes strained. Following an argument with Tom over the use of violence on a bully at his school, Jack runs away. He is caught by Carl, who, with Jack as his hostage, goes with his henchmen to the Stall house and demands that "Joey" return to Philadelphia with them. After the gangsters release Jack, Tom efficiently kills one of the two henchmen and severely injures the other, but Carl shoots and incapacitates him. Tom finally admits he is Joey. Before Carl can shoot him dead, Jack kills him. At the hospital, Edie confronts Tom who admits to being Joey Cusack. He tells her that he ran from Philadelphia to escape his criminal past. This admission deepens the tensions in their marriage. After Tom gets out of the hospital, the local sheriff Sam expresses his concern and suspicions. Just as he is about to confess, Edie lies to Sam and convinces him to leave. The couple then gets into a domestic dispute, culminating in violent sex. Afterward, Edie and Jack continue to further distance themselves from Tom, leaving him isolated. Tom's brother,
crime boss A crime boss, also known as a crime lord, mafia don, mob boss, kingpin, or godfather is the leader of a criminal organization. Description A crime boss has absolute or nearly absolute control over the other members of the organization and is ...
Richie Cusack, calls him and demands his return to Philadelphia, threatening to come to Indiana if he does not. In Philadelphia, Tom learns that the mobsters he offended took out their frustrations on Richie, penalizing him financially and delaying his advancement in the organization. Tom offers to make peace, but Richie orders his men to kill his brother. Tom manages to kill most of the gangsters and escapes. As Richie and his last henchman are hunting for him, Tom kills the henchman, takes his gun, and confronts Richie outside. Then he kills him with a single gunshot to the head. Tom returns home, where the atmosphere is tense and silent as the family sits around the dinner table. His young daughter eventually hands him a dinner plate. Some moments later, his son offers him a communal plate of food and Edie looks at Tom with tears in her eyes.


Cast


Production

The film is loosely based on the original graphic novel. Screenwriter Josh Olson intended from the beginning to use the original story as a springboard to explore the themes that interested him. Mortensen read Olson's original version of the script and "was quite disappointed. It was 120-odd pages of just mayhem; kind of senseless, really." He only agreed to do the movie after meeting with Cronenberg, who (according to Mortensen) reworked the script. Most of the film was shot in Millbrook, Ontario. The shopping centre scene was shot in Tottenham, Ontario, and the climactic scene was shot at the historic Eaton Hall Mansion, located in
King City, Ontario King City is an Unincorporated area#Canada, unincorporated Canadian community in the township of King, Ontario, King, Ontario, located north of Toronto. It is the largest community in King township, with 2,730 dwellings and a population of 8,396 ...
.
Harrison Ford Harrison Ford (born July 13, 1942) is an American actor. Regarded as a cinematic cultural icon, he has starred in Harrison Ford filmography, many notable films over seven decades, and is one of List of highest-grossing actors, the highest-gr ...
turned down the role of Tom Stall. Cronenberg stated that "I think it took three weeks to edit".


Alternate versions

The U.S. and European versions differ on only two fight scenes - one where Tom breaks the nose of one of Fogarty's thugs and one where he stomps on the throat of one of Richie Cusack's thugs. Both scenes display more blood flowing or gushing out of the victims in the European version. In addition, a more pronounced bone-crushing sound effect is used when Tom stomps on the thug's throat. A deleted scene, known as "Scene 44", features a
dream sequence A dream sequence is a technique used in storytelling, particularly in television and film, to set apart a brief interlude from the main story. The interlude may consist of a flashback, a flashforward, a fantasy, a vision, a dream, or some other ...
in the diner, where Fogarty tells Tom he will kill his family and him, to which Tom responds by shooting him with his shotgun at close range. He then approaches Fogarty's mangled body, which raises a gun and shoots him. In behind the scenes footage, Cronenberg expressed apprehension about the scene's similarity to his previous work. He even suggested a desire to have Fogarty retrieve the gun from his chest cavity had the action not been too similar to a scene from ''
Videodrome ''Videodrome'' is a 1983 Canadian science fiction body horror film written and directed by David Cronenberg and starring James Woods, Sonja Smits, and Debbie Harry. Set in Toronto during the early 1980s, it follows the CEO of a small UHF telev ...
''.


Interpretation

The film's title plays on multiple levels of meaning. Film critic
Roger Ebert Roger Joseph Ebert ( ; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American Film criticism, film critic, film historian, journalist, essayist, screenwriter and author. He wrote for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. Eber ...
stated that Cronenberg refers to three possibilities: Cronenberg himself described the film as a meditation on the human body and its relationship to violence:
For me the first fact of human existence is the human body. I'm not an atheist, but for me to turn away from any aspect of the human body to me is a philosophical betrayal. And there's a lot of art and religion whose whole purpose is to turn away from the human body. I feel in my art that my mandate is to not do that. So whether it's beautiful things—the sexuality part, or the violent part or the gooey part—it's just body fluids. It's when Elliott in ''Dead Ringer'' (''sic'') says, "Why are there no beauty contests for the insides of bodies?" It's a thought that disturbs me. How can we be disgusted by our own bodies? That really doesn't make any human sense. It makes some animal sense but it doesn't make human sense so I'm always discussing that in my movies and in this movie in particular. I don't ever feel that I've been exploitive in a crude, vulgar way, or just doing it to get attention. It's always got a purpose which I can be very articulate about. In this movie, we've got an audience that's definitely going to applaud these acts of violence and they do because it's set up that these acts are justifiable and almost heroic at times. But I'm saying, "Okay, if you can applaud that, can you applaud this?" because this is the result of that gunshot in the head. It's not nice. And even if the violence is justifiable, the consequences of the violence are exactly the same. The body does not know what was the morality of that act. So I'm asking the audience to see if they can contain the whole experience of this violent act instead of just the heroic/dramatic one. I'm saying "Here's the really nasty effects on these nasty guys but still, the effects are very nasty." And that's the paradox and conundrum."


Music

The soundtrack to ''A History of Violence'' was released on October 11, 2005. The scored was composed by
Howard Shore Howard Leslie Shore (born October 18, 1946) is a Canadian composer, conductor and orchestrator noted for his film scores. He has composed the scores for over 80 films, most notably the scores for ''The Lord of the Rings'' and '' The Hobbit'' fi ...
.


Release


Theatrical

''A History of Violence'' premiered at the
Cannes Film Festival The Cannes Film Festival (; ), until 2003 called the International Film Festival ('), is the most prestigious film festival in the world. Held in Cannes, France, it previews new films of all genres, including documentaries, from all around ...
on May 16, 2005, and was released in the United States on September 30 following a limited release on September 23, 2005.


Home media

The film was released on
DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any ki ...
and VHS formats on March 14, 2006, and was reported by the ''
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...
'' as being the last major Hollywood film to be released on
VHS VHS (Video Home System) is a discontinued standard for consumer-level analog video recording on tape cassettes, introduced in 1976 by JVC. It was the dominant home video format throughout the tape media period of the 1980s and 1990s. Ma ...
, excluding limited promotional releases.


Reception


Box office

The film started with a limited release in 14 theaters and grossed $515,992 at the box office, averaging $36,856 per theater. A week later, it went on a wide release in 1,340 theaters and grossed $8.1 million over the weekend. During its entire theatrical run, the film grossed $31.5 million in the United States and a total of $61.4 million worldwide.


Critical response

Audiences polled by
CinemaScore CinemaScore is an American market research firm based in Las Vegas. It surveys film audiences to rate their viewing experiences with letter grades, reports the results, and forecasts box office receipts from the data. Background Ed Mintz, who ...
gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale. ''
Rolling Stone ''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. The magazine was first known fo ...
'' critic
Peter Travers Peter Joseph Travers (born June 27, 1943) is an American film critic, journalist, and television presenter. He reviews films for ABC News and previously served as a movie critic for ''People'' and ''Rolling Stone''. Travers also hosts the film i ...
gave the film four stars, highlighting its "explosive power and subversive wit", and lauded David Cronenberg as a "world-class director, at the top of his startlingly creative form". ''
Entertainment Weekly ''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American online magazine, digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, ...
'' reviewer
Lisa Schwarzbaum Lisa Schwarzbaum (born July 5, 1952) is an American film critic. She joined ''Entertainment Weekly'' as a senior writer in 1991, working as a film critic for the magazine alongside Owen Gleiberman from 1995 to 2013. Early life Lisa Schwarzbaum w ...
gave the film an A, concluding that "David Cronenberg's brilliant movie" was "without a doubt one of the very best of the year".
Manohla Dargis Manohla June Dargis ( ) is an American film critic. She is the chief film critic for ''The New York Times''. She is a five-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Career Before being a film critic for ''The New York Times'', Dargis ...
of ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' called the film a "mindblower", and noted Cronenberg's "refusal to let us indulge in movie violence without paying a price".
Roger Ebert Roger Joseph Ebert ( ; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American Film criticism, film critic, film historian, journalist, essayist, screenwriter and author. He wrote for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. Eber ...
also gave the film a positive review, observing, "''A History of Violence'' seems deceptively straightforward, coming from a director with Cronenberg's quirky complexity, but think again. This is not a movie about plot, but about character." He gave it three and a half out of four stars. It was ranked the best film of 2005 in the Village Voice Film Poll. In December 2005, it was named to the
Toronto International Film Festival The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF, often stylized as tiff) is one of the most prestigious and largest publicly attended film festivals in the world. Founded in 1976, the festival takes place every year in early September. The organi ...
's annual Canada's top-ten list of the year's best Canadian films.
BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...
film critic
Mark Kermode Mark Kermode (, ; ; born 2 July 1963) is an English film critic, musician, radio presenter, television presenter, author and podcaster. He is the co-presenter (with Ellen E. Jones) of the BBC Radio 4 programme ''Screenshot'', and co-presenter ...
named the film the best of 2005.


Retrospective lists

In 2010, ''
Empire An empire is a political unit made up of several territories, military outpost (military), outposts, and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a hegemony, dominant center and subordinate peripheries". The center of the ...
'' named the film the 448th-greatest film of all time. The French film magazine '' Cahiers du Cinéma'' ranked the film as fifth place in its list of best films of the decade, 2000–2009. In his list of best films of the decade,
Peter Travers Peter Joseph Travers (born June 27, 1943) is an American film critic, journalist, and television presenter. He reviews films for ABC News and previously served as a movie critic for ''People'' and ''Rolling Stone''. Travers also hosts the film i ...
named this number four, praising director David Cronenberg:
Is Canadian director David Cronenberg the most unsung maverick artist in movies? Bet on it ... Cronenberg knows violence is wired into our DNA. His film showed how we secretly crave what we publicly condemn. This is potent poison for a thriller, and unadulterated, unforgettable Cronenberg.
In 2016, the film was ranked among the 100 greatest films since 2000 in an international critics' poll by 177 critics around the world.


Accolades


Indian adaptation

''Leo'', a 2023 Indian Tamil language film co-written and directed by
Lokesh Kanagaraj Lokesh Kanagaraj (; born 14 March 1986) is an Indian film director, screenwriter and producer who works in Tamil cinema. He started his career with a short film in the 2016 anthology '' Aviyal,'' he later directed his first feature film '' Maan ...
, is an adaptation of ''A History of Violence''. Lokesh said that ''Leo'' is his tribute to David Cronenberg's ''A History of Violence''. According to Lokesh, "it inspired me to write ''Leo''. ''A History of Violence'' left its mark on me and from that this movie was born. ''Leo'' is my tribute".


References


Works cited

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External links

* * *
Graphic novel preview
{{DEFAULTSORT:History Of Violence 2005 films 2005 action drama films 2005 action thriller films 2005 crime thriller films 2000s English-language films 2000s American films 2000s Canadian films American action drama films American action thriller films American crime thriller films American drama films American gangster films American neo-noir films Canadian action drama films Canadian action thriller films Canadian crime thriller films Canadian drama films Canadian gangster films English-language Canadian films English-language German films Films about Irish-American culture Films about the Irish Mob Films about siblicide Films based on Vertigo Comics titles Films directed by David Cronenberg Films scored by Howard Shore Films set in Indiana Films set in Philadelphia Films shot in Ohio Films shot in Toronto Fiction about fratricide Irish-American culture in Philadelphia Live-action films based on comics Midlife crisis films New Line Cinema films English-language crime thriller films English-language action drama films English-language action thriller films Adaptations of works by John Wagner