A History of Violence (2005)
Positives: Great acting, cinematography, plot, visuals, passionate.
Negatives: the beginning drags a little, but it works.
I caught A History of Violence last night, and it shot holes in my belief that comic books make awkward movies. Okay, so this wasn’t a comic book, it was a graphic novel, presumably akin to what Ghost World was before it became one of my favorite indie films. (Long Live Steve Buscemi!) This is all certainly the complete opposite of what comic-bookiness CAN become.
But the filmic interpretation of A History of Violence is flat out excellent, and solid. For some reason, the characters are completely believable in most respects, although a few characters do take on archetypal roles and act more as plot devices, but that doesn’t take anything away from how great they were. Viggo Mortensen, who I’m familiar with from The Lord of the Rings trilogy and Hidalgo, and Maria Bello, who I’ve only ever known from ER, play a husband and wife who run a diner in a small Indiana town, living a humble, quiet life until Tom becomes a local hero for his somewhat-shocking life-saving skills. After this happens, publicity leads to the revealing of our hero’s past, with dire consequences.
I’ll tell you what, Maria Bello is a DAMN good actress! Actually, everyone in this film played their parts so perfectly, as did Ed Harris, the creepy dude with the shiny eyeball. There are just so many moments where the characters act exactly how I would expect them to react, and do things that are startling in a way that seems very realistic and familiar, and completely organic and natural rather than scripted for poshness.
One warning before seeing this movie is that it starts out really slow. Almost unbearably so, and for the first 15 minutes I was thinking “Holy crap, this movie is going to be boring.” But it’s not representative of the rest of the movie, and I look back on it and realize that the pacing was actually appropriate. There’s another movie that I’ve seen, probably in the Tarantino moviescape, that has a similar pacing in the beginning. Dragging on stylistically in order to say something about the characters and their states of mind…
I guess the other warning is probably an obvious one… There’s really not THAT much violence in this movie, but when it happens it’s rather graphic, but still quick.
Definitely a great suspense/thriller with amazing cinematography, writing, acting, directing, and all of that good stuff. :)
Also, if you ever had someone bully you in school, there’s definitely a scene for you in this movie.
