Fade in on a deck chair next to a motel door.
Camera smoothly pans over to the next door, watching two men exit to share some dialogue in a convertible. One man walks away. The other, in the convertible, drives forward, the camera still following him. Main credits roll as all of this happens. The man in the car is told that there is a drinking fountain behind the desk. This would be the front desk of a motel. He walks in...This is five minutes into the film and only now is there a take (a different camera shot). Watching this opening scene, I was thinking how little the actors are doing on camera, yet it was very entertaining. The man, who was in the car most of the time, leaves the car. The camera rises over the car and follows him into the motel front desk. As he fills a cup of water, he oh-so-calmly walks past a couple of dead bodies with slit throats. If the loss of blood hadn�t killed them, they would have drowned in their pools of blood.
A door opens as the cup is being filled with water. The man looks at a little girl standing in the doorway. He kneels, telling her to shush, and reaches behind his back with one hand. He pulls out a gun, and shoots her.
Poor acting by a blonde-headed child screams over the sound of the bullet. In the Stall family household, the baby of the family had a bad dream. Yes, this scene has been done a million times in movies, but I guess we�re uncreative enough to put this popular character-developing technique into the film. It was a poor choice, I tell you what, because it�s not something the child actor could pull off. The actor portraying the older brother was a little too caring of his little sister to seem realistic. I mean, audiences can�t relate to him. At least I can�t.
The whole family gathers around the little girl who just had a nightmare. Completely unrealistic. And for a film entitled �A History of Violence,� you wanna be realistic. This (the acting) might have been the film�s only fault. The only other thing that stood out in my mind was a computer generated broken nose. I mean, make-up would have been realistic and effective. But the rest of the violence was done VERY well. The fight scenes were quick and effective. The sound effects were painful to listen to. The action was awesome. The drama is well done, too, but I�m afraid the actors took away from it. Maria Bello, I love her, but she�s not smart with acting. Unrealistic! The sex scenes, if nothing else attracts you, you should see it for these. They�re entertaining, maybe bizarre, but worth it, I guess. Interesting is the word.
�A History of Violence.� Grade : B. Rewatch value: B-. It is sometimes too dramatic. But I think maybe the violence and the sex are the main attractions here. Oh, and Ed Harris is an awesome scene stealer. And William Hurt�s scene is something to look forward to.
~~ SPOILERS from here on~~SCROLL DOWN to read the PLOT (One (1) paragraph)~~
The son, a teenager, catches a ball during gym class during a baseball game. It�s sad, but the hitter must have the biggest anger problem of all, and decides that bullying is the way to go. So pretty much, there�s this bully, and he hates the son of Viggo Mortensen. Don�t worry about why he�s a bully, just pretend that he has hated him all his life. And instead of standing up to him, the kid just tells him to forget about it.
One of the coolest moments in the movie is when the bully is getting ready to...well, bully the kid, he�s driving, and almost crashes into another car. Then we see the people in the car he (the bully) almost hit, and there sit our badguys from the beginning.
Now we know what�s gonna happen, if you have any idea what the movie is about.
THE PLOT ~ Tom Stall (Viggo) owns a diner. He�s living a normal life in the country, in walking distance of his diner, and has a very loving wife and a son and a daughter. This is disturbed when a couple of guys (who we are first introduced to in this movie) come in the diner and hold the place up. Armed robbery? Tom�s reaction is quick, taking out these guys with three shots. He becomes the town hero. He is (most likely) seen on the news by Carl Fogarty (Ed Harris), who takes some goons to the diner with him, claiming that Tom Stall is actually �Joey Cusack.� Tom has no idea what he�s talking about, yet Mr. Fogarty won�t leave him alone until he gets Tom to come away with him. Perhaps to kill him.
One of the most powerful scenes is when the son is really being pushed around in the school hallways by the bully. He�s calling his girlfriend a slut and calling him a wuss, because his dad�s this big hero now, and the son doesn�t do anything. Played by new actor Ashton Holmes, Jack Stall unleashes on the bully, beating his friend up also. I think those powerfully emotional scenes like that are the most effective. Kind of like in �Training Day,� when Denzel Washington is pissed off at the end, yelling at everyone. The actor did very very well in this scene, when finally fighting this bully, a true dumbass.
The situation escalates to where Carl Fogarty has to come to the Stall�s house to collect Joey Cusack, or kill him. Tom Stall has hits one guy (the first goon) in the throat, shoots the only other goon, and finishes off the first goon by smashing his nose in. Then Ed Harris is the only one left, and is able to get a shot off at Tom, grounding him. Then, in a well acted scene by Viggo, Tom is ready to die, and Jack (the son) blows out Carl Fogarty�s stomach with Tom�s shotgun.
Edie Stall finds out that Tom Stall actually is Joey Cusack, and has another crying scene. The one I�m talking about is in the hospital bathroom. Alright, maybe it is well done, but it�s ineffective because her timing is off. It didn�t feel real. It was too quick or something. She didn�t even have time to let it sink in that her husband is this other guy, named Joey Cusack. Apparently Joey Cusack is a killer. Carl Fogarty wanted him dead. He got into witness protection or something to change his name to Stall, and now has a family living with a fake name. Then Joey�s brother, Ritchie, calls.
Here we have William Hurt, coming in a scene I was looking forward to, because once Ed Harris� character dies, the movie feels like it�s gonna be over. So it�s like an extended ending, which I always love in movies.
The last of the cool violence is the strangling scene. First of all, Joey (Tom (Viggo)) has cost his brother, Ritchie, a lot of money. So, obviously, he�s gotta die. Violence heals all wounds. That makes no sense, of course. Negative sense, maybe. But his brother has one of HIS goons strangle Tom. Remember, this movie is based on a graphic novel, and in most graphic novels, the plots and events are a little strange. But this is happening. The wire used to strangle Tom/Joey cuts his throat and his hand (since he saves himself with his hand). Well done. Well done. Good violence. Good action.
The brother (William Hurt) has a death scene, and that is only a bullet to the head. But one of the goons is kicked in the leg and there is a wicked sound effect of a crack, which is awesome.
Fine piece of film. I recommend it. The sex is good. As I said, Edie Stall is a very loving wife who never got to be a teenager with her husband, so she decides that they�ll live young by having some wild sex. She dresses as a cheerleader. Later, after she finds out that he was Joey Cusack, she runs from him, he holds her down...and they have sex. It�s powerful, yes I guess it�s pretty weird. I dunno if that�d ever happen. I mean, it�s love.
The movie ends with a long, very long, outroduction as Viggo Mortensen sits at his dinner table. His throat is cut, awesome make-up effect, and then his family passes him the food. A straight cut to black ends the film after the feeling has sunk in. Yet, I wasn�t ready for it to be over, since that last scene lasted so long. I guess you�re supposed to feel that the violence is over, and they can return to normal. Perhaps they can�t, though. I couldn�t tell. I mean, after these events...you can�t return to normal so easily. Whatever. The ending was uncreative. But hey...the film was good. It was entertaining. I�d see it again on video.
Cut to black.
THE FOLLOWING IS TAKEN FROM an IMDb POST:
Hi. First off, let me say that I'd never seen a preview of this movie, and I hadn't even heard of it before I went to go see it. I haven't read a review or heard a professional critique. I saw it with a female, and she wanted to see it because she saw Viggo's (in my opinion) twisted face on the poster. I had no prejudices about this film, so saying it was pumped up too much, or if you think that I was swayed by the media, is simply retarded and makes no sense.
Anyhow, I will use lots of SPOILERS, and I will jump around quite a bit, so if you haven't seen the movie, this probably won't make much sense.. Just to let you know.
This movie isn't a landmark of any kind, but it's most definitely good. Not fantastic, just good.
It is very important to take note of the very first scene in the movie. The two characters shown aren't really too important to the rest of the movie, but set up the length of the movie to understandable measures. This is because without that scene, we wouldn't realize how cold-blooded or heartless these characters are. We wouldn't know the extent of the danger that the characters in the diner are later in the movie. Of course, later, we discover that they were in very little danger, but we hadn't been revealed such things at this point.
On top of this, if you take note, the movie ends when events stemming from the diner incident ends. It's all stemmed to those two initial characters. Ed Harris sees Mortenson on TV because of it, and after Mortenson deals with that, and the direct backlash from that, the movie simply ends. In short, we're only dealing with the events surrounding the actions of the two opening characters. That's why, I believe, this scene was as long as it was.
The sex scenes have been noted to be gratuitous and unnecessary, but I beg to differ.
This movie is about people. People have sex. The first sex scene, from what I gathered, was to show that they don't really have time for themselves because they've been so dedicated to the diner and to their children. Also, the lines "We never lived our teenage years..." or whatever the line was adds to the backstory of the main character. From just that scene I know that Mortenson's character obviously told his wife that he had a troubled childhood and didn't have time for the usual teenage fumbling around with drugs and sex.
And since you can't say that I'm incorrect on that character development, because I'm not, you can no longer say that the scene was gratuitous and out of place. It made sense to me, maybe because I think about movies and don't let them think for me, but it made sense nontheless, and if it makes sense to someone, it was right where it needed to be.
Moving on to the second one, there are numerous explanations for why that's in the movie. Without going into depth, the woman either used her sexuality to escape the situation, which is the literal and obvious answer, or that part of her is somewhat excited by the "mafia" character, as many real-life women are, and/or she was excited by the fact that her husband actually is a caregiver and a protector of her family, ignoring the deception for just the moment. More than likely, it is a combination.
Even if you don't agree with that, this movie is about regular people, and they have sex.
The violence isn't over the top. I worked for a funeral home for a time, and I had to pick up dead bodies out of ditches or whatever. People's bodies are very fragile, and exit wounds are massive. I'm not saying that bodies damaged in this way will look exactly like this movie, but real life violence is much mor stomach-turning than what you see in literally all of the movies you've ever seen.
People have also commented on the poor acting of the secondary and tertiary characters, most notably the son and daughter and the high school bully. We must come to understand that the primary character, Viggo, is shrouded in dramatic irony, so we can't blatantly learn too much about his character. The secondary characters, his wife and children, being the secondary characters, aren't 100% important to the outcome of the story or the actions within the story, aside from actions directly resulting from their presence.
None of the secondary characters are particularly well acted, but this is not important to the story. They do a fair enough job. His wife is a typical wife and mother. She is, of course, shocked at what she finds, but in the end she forgives Viggo for what he's done, because she is a real wife, not just a temporary spouse. The son is frightened by his father, and pissed at him as well, but that doesn't mean that he doesn't know that he's his father, and thus he feels a need to defend him in a time of need. He's a teenager, so he's going to be confused and offset by what happened, and his lines about getting "whacked" aren't out of character for a teenager in a small town like that. The only experience that any of these characters have had with the mafia probably lie within a moviehouse.
And as far as the high school bully, anyone who either goes to highschool or has recently been there knows that there are similar characters abound. He was not a secondary character, but a tertiary character. The secondary character would be the son. Since a tertiary character only needs one dimension, I'd say he filled it out quite well. He played a jerk who eats his words. On top of that, he needed to only be that so the real secondary character, the son, could go through the character arc to fulfill the intention of the title, as he is supposedly prone to violence because of his father, or his family "History of Violence."
Like it or not, this movie is complete. It's not perfect, but you must suspend your disbelief when watching movies. That's a fact, because movies are not real. The small children in the movie probably can't act because 99.9999% of small children cannot act. It's a rarity when a Dakota Fanning or Haley Joel-Osmond (sp?) appear, and even if you deny that they're good actors, when age is considered, they're amazing actors.
I understand that a lot of people can't get over the sex or the violence, but that doesn't negate the rest of the film. It's good. Not fantastic, but it's good
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