A History of Violence (2005)
★★★ — A History of Violence (2005)
That opening scene. A quiet roadside diner, the kind of place you'd stop at without a second thought, and then suddenly Viggo Mortensen is doing something brutal and precise and the whole film snaps into focus. David Cronenberg has always had a gift for making violence feel genuinely uncomfortable, and that early sequence in A History of Violence is as clean and effective a statement of intent as any director has put on screen. It grabs you by the collar and asks a question it's very serious about answering: who exactly is this man?
The first hour earns real admiration. There's a creeping, frost-under-the-door quality to the atmosphere as the story builds around Tom Stall, the small-town diner owner turned unlikely hero, and whether his past is exactly what it looks like or something far more troubling. Cronenberg peels back the layers of small-town American domesticity with a steady hand, and the sense of unease never quite lets you settle. It's the kind of film that makes the mundane feel faintly threatening, which is very much his territory. If you've seen my review of The Brood, you'll know Cronenberg has been doing this particular trick, disrupting the domestic, for a very long time.
Viggo Mortensen is reliable, as he almost always is. But I'll be honest: this isn't among the performances of his I return to. There's a deliberate restraint to what he does here that suits the character on paper, yet it tips, at moments, into a kind of detachment that leaves some of the emotional beats feeling slightly hollow. You're watching a man with a secret, and you're never quite sure whether that blankness is the character's armour or the performance's ceiling. I'm genuinely not certain, which is either a compliment or a criticism depending on your patience for ambiguity.
Where the film is less ambiguous is in the supporting work. Ed Harris brings a real volatility to his scenes, the kind of unpredictable energy that keeps you tense even when the script isn't doing much. And the bedroom scene, the infamous one, still lands with a jolt. Not just for its intensity, but for what it quietly reveals about the dynamic between these two people. It reframes everything you thought you understood about their relationship in a way that's genuinely unsettling.
Which makes it all the more frustrating that the third act lets the side down so badly. The psychological tension that's been so carefully constructed starts to deflate, and the film retreats into something closer to a conventional thriller. Mobster showdowns replace the creeping dread, and the violence stops feeling revelatory and starts feeling rote. It's the difference between Cronenberg at his most precise and Cronenberg on autopilot, and you can feel the shift happening in real time.
The ending is deliberately ambiguous, I understand that, but there's a difference between ambiguity that haunts you and ambiguity that just sort of shrugs. This is the latter. Threads are left dangling not because they're inviting you to think, but because the film seems to have quietly run out of things to say about them. You leave the cinema, or switch it off at home, with a mild sense of deflation rather than the gutted, troubled feeling the first act promises.
Three stars. A History of Violence is a decent, genuinely thought-provoking film with some strong moments and a compelling central question. It's just not the cohesive, unsettling experience it sets itself up to be. Worth your time, especially for that opening and that mid-film scene. But approach the back half with managed expectations.
Rating: ★★★ | Year: 2005 | Watched: 2025-07-23
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from David Cronenberg: The Brood (1979)
More with Viggo Mortensen: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) · The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) · The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
More from Germany: Lessons of Darkness (1992) · Cemetery Man (1994) · The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) · Resident Evil: Retribution (2012)
More from the 2000s: Kirikou and the Wild Beasts (2005) · Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) · Daredevil (2003) · Apocalypto (2006)
More drama: Viy (1967) · Wonder (2017) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Beautiful Boy (2018)
More thriller: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Angst (1983) · The Long Walk (2025) · Punishment Park (1971)
