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
Editing by Ronald Sanders
Distributed by New Line Cinema
Release date(s) September 23, 2005
Running time 96 min.
Language English
Budget $32,000,000 (est.)
Gross revenue $60,332,684
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

A History of Violence is an Academy Award nominated crime drama thriller film directed by David Cronenberg, and written by Josh Olson, based on the graphic novel of the same name by John Wagner and Vince Locke. The film was released in 2005 and features Viggo Mortensen as the owner of a diner who is thrust into the spotlight after killing two robbers in self-defense. Most of the film was shot in Millbrook, Ontario, and the final scene being shot at the historic Eaton Hall Mansion, located in King City, Ontario, Canada. [1] The film was put into limited release in the United States on September 23, 2005 and wide-release on September 30, 2005. It received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for William Hurt and Best Adapted Screenplay for Josh Olson. It has the distinction of being the final major Hollywood motion picture released on VHS.[2]

Contents

[edit] Plot

The film starts with one of two robbers going into a hotel office, which has several murdered people laying on the floor. He then shoots and kills a terrified little girl to leave no witnesses behind. Tom Stall is a local restaurant owner in the small town of Millbrook, Indiana who lives peacefully with his lawyer wife Edie, his teenage son Jack and younger daughter Sarah. One night the robbers come into Millbrook and stop at Tom's restaurant. The older robber asks for some coffee but Tom says that they are closed. The younger robber holds a female employee down. When Tom says they don't carry too much money, the robber takes out his pistol. He shouts at a terrified teenage girl to silence her screaming and tells the younger robber to rape the employee. Tom suddenly jolts and smashes a coffee pot into the older robber's face. Tom jumps over the counter grabbing the older robber's gun. Tom shoots both robbers and drops the gun, apparently stunned.

Tom's apparent heroic actions sparks national attention. In the subsequent publicity, Tom is visited by a scarred man named Carl Fogarty. Fogarty alleges Tom is really someone named Joey Cusack from Philadelphia. Tom denies the allegation and claims he has never been to Philadelphia. Edie later calls the sheriff to get information on Fogarty. He suprises them by telling them that Fogarty is a top ranking boss in the Irish Mob in Philadelphia. Meanwhile Fogarty is persistent, however his constant presence and threatening behavior menaces the whole Stall family. One day Edie loses Sarah in the shopping mall but finds her at a toy store. Fogarty says that he's been watching over her and Edie tells him to stay away from her family. He then mocks her by daring her to ask Tom why he is so good at killing people.

Jack, who has always avoided fighting when bullied at school, now retaliates against his tormentors who are trying to get at him by making fun of his father by beating them up severely. He kicks one of the bullies in the crotch and punches and kicks the other several times while screaming apparently sending the bully to the hospital. He and Tom have an argument and Tom slaps him after he mocks his father saying that solving problems in the family is by shooting people. He then runs away. Tom is even more disappointed to hear that Edie had an encounter with Fogarty. Suddenly they notice Fogarty's car driving up their lane. Tom walks outside with Edie and the family shotgun on the front porch. Fogarty mocks him about him being Tom Stall and calls him Joey for most of the time while asking him to come with them. When Tom refuses, Fogarty reveals that he has kidnapped Jack. Edie runs over for Jack but Tom stops her and one of Fogarty's men prevent Jack from escaping. Tom tells a horrified Edie to go up to their younger daughter Sarah for protection. Fogarty asks Tom again to come with them to Philadelphia to meet some people.

Tom refuses even after they let Jack go. When one of Fogarty's men try to forcefully subdue him with a gun, Tom punches his nose repeatedly shattering it after breaking his arm and snatches the pistol from his hand and shoots one of the henchmen until he is struck in the shoulder by a shot from Fogarty. When Fogarty approaches him with his pistol aimed at him, Tom tells Fogarty "I should have killed you back in Philly," finally admitting that he is Joey Cusack. When Fogarty is about to kill him, Jack intervenes by shooting Fogarty in the back with the family's double-barreled shotgun instantly killing him. His wife begins to suspect the truth, and questions him while visiting him in the hospital. He admits everything about him being the mob assassin Joey Cusack, shocking his wife, but when the local sheriff starts to believe the mobsters' claim of Tom's criminal past, Edie defends Tom.

Some days later, Richard "Richie" Cusack, Tom's brother and a Philadelphia crime boss, telephones Tom and demands that "Joey" visit him. Tom drives to Philadelphia to meet his brother at his estate. Richie describes his terribly mixed feelings at seeing his runaway brother again after so long. They talk about their past and how Tom used barbed wire to blind Fogarty in one eye. Tom says that he's come here to make peace. Richie then signals one of his men to garrote him. Tom realizes he is about to die and saves himself by blocking the wire. Tom proceeds to kill all of Richie's bodyguards and finally Richie himself.

Tom then drives home to his family, who are all sitting down to dinner. He receives a silent welcome in a tense atmosphere, where only his daughter can initially make eye-contact with him, although they end up preparing his place at the table. The film ends with the implied question of whether or not his family can welcome him back into the fold.

[edit] Cast

Actor Role
Viggo Mortensen Tom Stall / Joey Cusack
Maria Bello Edie Stall
Ed Harris Carl Fogarty
Aiden Devine Charles "Charlie" Roarke
Bill McDonald Frank Mulligan
William Hurt Richie Cusack
Ian Matthews Ruben
Ashton Holmes Jack Stall
Heidi Hayes Sarah Stall
Stephen McHattie Leland Jones
Greg Bryk Billy Orser
Peter MacNeill Sheriff Sam Carney

[edit] Adaptation

The film is 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 know the screenplay was an adapted work until he had begun discussing Olson's second draft. The diner scene that sets the story in motion is nearly identical, and the basic cast of characters remains largely unchanged. 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 changes 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 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 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 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. In the comic book, he and Tom are childhood friends; while in the film they are brothers (they were not 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 euthanasia. In the film, Richie is depicted as Tom's brother; he is a mob boss who tries to have Tom killed. However, Tom ultimately overcomes Riche's henchmen, and subsequently kills his brother.

While in the comic, Tom's family is supportive and completely understanding, the film depicts his family struggling with the startling truth about Tom. The lengthy subplot concerning his son Jack turning to violence after his father's example does 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, Edie shoots Torrino, and in the film, Jack shoots Fogarty. The comic concludes with Tom violently defeating the mobsters that haunted him, whereas the film ends with Tom's silent return to his family; a change that drastically shifts the tone of the film towards a more familial focus.

[edit] Interpretation

The film's title plays on multiple levels of meaning. Roger Ebert says that 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 film. "I am a complete Darwinian," says Cronenberg, A History of Violence is in many ways about the survival of the fittest—at all costs.[3] Cronenberg did not come up with the title, however. That distinction belongs to John Wagner.

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.[citation needed] Olson has acknowledged the debt the film pays to Peckinpah, especially the film Straw Dogs. He has also cited David Peoples' and Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven (there is a sly reference to pig farming by William Hurt's character) and the 1947 Jacques Tourneur thriller, Out of the Past.

[edit] Critical reception

Besides receiving Academy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actor (William Hurt) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Josh Olson), the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes claims 87% of critics have given the film positive reviews (based on 189 reviews).[4] On Metacritic, the film had an average score of 81 out of 100, based on 37 reviews.[5] It was ranked the best film of 2005 in the Village Voice Film Poll.[6]

[edit] Awards and nominations

[edit] Won

[edit] Nominations

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Newswire article
  2. ^ Citypaper.com article
  3. ^ Rogerebert.com reviews: A History of Violence
  4. ^ A History of Violence - Rotten Tomatoes. Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved on 2007-09-23.
  5. ^ History of Violence, A (2005): Reviews. Metacritic. Retrieved on 2007-09-23.
  6. ^ village voice > take 7 film critics' poll

[edit] External links


v • d • e
DC Comics films
The Serials
Batman (1943) • Hop Harrigan (1946) • The Vigilante (1947) • Superman (1948) • Congo Bill (1948) • Batman and Robin (1949) • Atom Man Vs. Superman (1950)
Single films
Superman and the Mole Men (1951) • Batman (1966) • Supergirl (1984) • Steel (1997) • Road to Perdition (2002) • Catwoman (2004) • A History of Violence (2005) • Constantine (2005) • V for Vendetta (2006) • The Spirit (2008) • Watchmen (2009)
Franchises
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Films 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 • "Camera" • eXistenZ • Spider • A History of Violence • Eastern Promises