A History of Violence

David Cronenberg is one of the few legitimate auteurs in the world of English language film, but I would have never known this was his film had I not seen his name in the credits. It feels like the film of a first time director with a script by a first time writer. Perhaps it is because this is his first film with a respectable budget and he just got preoccupied with his new toys that he can use in order to recreate that idyllic Small Town, USA feel, but it's distracting and you start to wonder how a steady hand like Cronenberg's could be so sloppy. Of course it's a film about violence (and it is violent) -- the excitment of it, the grotesqueness of it, the catharsis of it, the eroticism of it, and the survival of the fittest. Viggo Mortensen is Tom Stall, a small town business owner with a hidden past that he'd like to keep hidden. You have to wonder why he's so damn good at killing people -- such as when two gun toting crooks attempt to rob his diner and abuse the patrons, and in a flash, he takes matters into his own hands with grisly results. But he saved lives and becomes a hero. The scenes of violence are marvelously staged, and William Hurt has a scene stealing role, but the rest feels sloppy. Cronenberg seems to be touching on interesting themes, but he and his screenwriter can't quite bring them out. I guess it doesn't really matter anyway, because as far as cinema is conerned, Sam Peckinpah has already made the most authoritative statements about violence with The Wild Bunch and particularly Straw Dogs.