Neo-Noir Watch: A History of Violence (2005)

 

Format:  Max?

Viewing:  First

Director:  David Cronenberg

Watched:  03/01/2025

Back when A History of Violence (2005) was in theaters, I was scheduled to see it as it’s based on a comic from a briefly lived DC Comics adult-oriented imprint. I’d read and quite liked the comic, but at showtime, one of us got sick, and we didn’t see it. And then, I never got back to it.

And that’s a shame, because 20 years later I liked it. But had I seen it back then, I doubt I would have understood how much this movie reads like a 1940’s film noir, maybe something like The Killers or a Goodis novel or movie.  It kind of reflects some of that post-War noir grit where we didn't slot people into "good guy" and "bad guy" so readily.

SPOILERS  

Viggo Mortensen stars as the smalltown café owner, Tom Stall, married to Maria Bello. The pair share kids aged around 16 and 5. Like many noir films, it’s about what happens when the unbridled viciousness of organized crime intersects with the mundane lives of ordinary people - and what happens when someone among the normal people isn't so average. 

 In a different decade, the William Hurt role is played by Raymond Burr in a B picture or Richard Conte if they had more money. Ed Harris would be played by Robert Ryan, and you can imagine Burt Lancaster in the lead role.

The thesis of the film occurs before we meet any main characters - two guys who seem to be either contract killers or just a couple of psychos who found each other are heading back to the East Coast and passing through the heartland.  As they leave a motel, they make sure to bump off the manager and maid so no one can identify them (as well as a little girl).  It's alerting us that bad people are out there, and they don't care about consequences or have a morality that would stop them from violence.  

Sticking to backroads, the pair stop in the small town and café owned by Tom Stall, and decide to take the place – for fun and profit. When they start making moves to lock the place up, rob it and murder everyone, Mortensen leaps over the counter and dispatches our baddies with extreme prejudice. 

The action draws the attention of the media, who put Mortensen all over the news. Shortly, Ed Harris and a couple of thugs show up looking for Mortsensen, claiming he’s not who he says he is – he’s Joey Cusack.  Mortensen insists he’s not who they think he is, but (spoilers) another fit of violence leaves questions that need answering. 

It’s a movie that is incredibly lean from a bullet-point/ plot-point perspective. There’s only really four incidents and tying narrative beats. What the movie wants to dive into is the question of who Joey/ Tom really is – is he now Tom? Because Joey was sure right there below the surface. And that’s reflected as much in who he is to his son – who can only see “Dad”, and his wife, who knows him as Tom, and her own attraction/ revulsion to who she realizes she’s married – which is embodied in one of the more memorable sex scenes you’re going to get in a 21st Century movie.

It's Cronenberg, so expect that when violence occurs, it’s explosive and ugly. We see the effects of the violence on the human body, as well as the people witnessing the outbursts. And that’s the point. It’s not really framed as exciting action, and this is not a movie where the impact of actually seeing someone gun someone else down is a quick one-liner and a light chuckle.

The film ends on an open page of a book where we don’t really know where the Stall family goes from here. Kids are willing to accept who dad is, after all – they’re still alive thanks to his actions. But where the marriage goes after two decades of lying is an open question.

Cronenberg likes to work across genres, and still his work always has a flourish that lets you know who made that movie – one of the names of late 20th century western film auteurism. He only uses nostalgia and sentiment to remind us that they’re illusions layered on top of a world based on predator and prey. He may not have the rosiest notion of humanity. And when we cling to those notions, we feel pain.
But I am just not sure – as good as the film is – that it’s wildly novel. Movies play with the idea of duality of violence all the time, if not with as much of a mid-western poetry vibe. Unforgiven is a return to violence. The Long Kiss Goodnight is both tongue-in-cheek and sincere in its depiction. And noir is often scattered with stories of everymen and cops having to rise to the occasion when it comes to ruthless thugs who have found advantage in predation of normies - and sometimes how those "normies" survive. See Key Largo, Nightfall and countless others.

That doesn’t mean the movie isn’t good. It is. Everyone in the movie is hitting their notes perfectly and with surprising resonance. It nails the notion of the smalltown nobody hiding someone deep within.

The cast is small but playing a bit outside their 2005 zones (did William Hurt have a zone?  It doesn't seem he did).  Mortensen's duality has a physicality and voice to it that works incredibly well to convey the idea without ever feeling like it's too much - and you can see him shift between the two in a single shot.  Ed Harris should never be forgotten as one of the greats - and he is no less so here, used for his gravitas turned inside out as a villain.  And William Hurt's Richie Cusack is an amazing creation of an absolute monster who seems kind of fun til he's not.  And, friends, Maria Bello kills it as the smart wife who is enraged at what her husband has hidden from her - who was so clearly in love, and doesn't know what to do with this duality.  She's clearly 10-15 years too young for the part, but she's great and we give it a pass.

I dug it both as a throwback to post-WWII crime pictures and a modern look at similar ideas.  And I'll certainly rewatch it at some point.

I think we'd be remiss if we didn't acknowledge how Bello turns in an effortlessly sexy performance.  Good golly.