Movie Review - A History of Violence - Interesting
Tom Stall, a humble family man and owner of a popular neighborhood restaurant, lives a quiet but fulfilling existence in the Midwest. One night Tom foils a crime at his place of business and, to his chagrin, is plastered all over the news for his heroics. Following this, mysterious people follow the Stalls' every move, concerning Tom more than anyone else. As this situation is confronted, more lurks out over where all these occurrences have stemmed from compromising his marriage, family relationship and the main characters' former relations in the process.
This is not a new movie, it came out in 2005 - I can't say I remember hearing about it at that time. Probably not a highly billed film, I just picked it up recently as it looked interesting.
It scores a very high 7.5/10 on IMDB though, which gives an indication that it should be a decent film.
The movie starts out pretty sharply with some strange characters, interesting dialogue and some extreme violence. In some ways the first few scenes reminded me of Tarantino movies.
The movie progresses from there, leaving you wondering what is going to happen next.
Drama is nicely handled through-out, the pacing is good and Mortensen plays his role very well on both sides of the fence.
Starting out as an accidental hero it leaves you with a feeling something odd is happening, and it plays out from there.
The violence is pretty brutal, like the sex scenes - straight to the point and direct. It also plays on some serious issues like 'good' vs 'bad' violence...how do you decide where the line is?
I won't spoil the movie for you, but I will very much suggest that you do watch it.
A brutal and gripping movie, I give it a nose pounding 8.5/10.
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