Saw “A History of Violence” on video last night.
I thought it was well-crafted and engrossing.
But, more importantly, what did you think?
I’ve been a David Cronenberg fan for years and have enjoyed his switch to more mainstream movies in recent years. However, this themes of tranformation remain, just less viceral. Still, it would be nice if he would do another exploding head movie. 
I enjoyed A History of Violence a lot, although I wish they had drawn out the question of who he really was a bit longer, and explained why he changed. The acting was top notch, all great actors, and I liked the slow and steady pace Cronenberg used.
The long, single cut, opening scene was fantastic. Difficult to watch, but well done. If you get a chance rent the DVD and watch the making of special, very interesting.
“Long live the New Flesh.”
Edit to add, I took my mom to see Cronenberg’s The Fly when it was first released. She still hasn’t forgiven me.
I really wanted to see this movie when it came out. I did not get to. 
Yeah, I’m watching the DVD stuff this morning.
I read that Harrison Ford turned down the lead. I’m so glad he did.
As a huge movie fan, in more ways than you know, and as a bit of a Cronenberg fan, I can’t help wondering why the heck I never heard of it…
Must be a living-in-the-UK thing.
Well, it didn’t get much publicity even in the US. At least not where I am.
I thought it was well crafted and engrossing.
It proved that Cronenberg is growing, I think. Crash (the other Crash) was a cool film, but something in it reminded me of Exotica. A History has less of a Canadian feel. One Atom Egoyan is enough.
I thought it was stupid and obvious.
I wasn’t surprised by a single-plot twist, except for the cartoonishly-evil crime-boss brother, who was ridiculous.
The angry sex on the stairs scene was hot, however.
I would imagine sex on stairs to be… ungainly?
There’s a 12 step fellowship for that.
As long as somebody got a good railing …
djm
William Hurt was da bomb.
I didn’t see it at all as a plot-twist movie.
SPOILER ALERT******************************
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SPOILER ALERT
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Anybody paying attention to the movie is fairly certain that the guy WAS the gangster in his former life, well before it is explicitly revealed. I thought what made the movie work was the tension that existed throughout the movie between “Tom” (the new good-guy identify) and “Joey” (the gangster) all in this one main character. Even for those who don’t see it coming, that is revealed early enough in the movie to make it clear that the movie isn’t set up as a plot-twist film.
The sex scenes, in addition to their hotness, were important, too, as a way of highlighting this duality in Tom/Joey.
So, I’m surprised you found it stupid.
Maybe plot twist wasn’t the right term. I wasn’t surprised by a single development the in the plot; it was film-by-numbers–act 1, act 2, act 3, etc.
Interesting characters and scripts do unexpected things, and nothing in this movie was ever unexpected. Every character at every moment did the most obvious thing they could be doing within the setup provided.
So was the setup interesting? No, not to me. Former bad guy tries to go straight, with all the usual consequences. Yawn.
Cardboard characters move through movies as if on rails. You’re never, ever startled by anything the character ever does, because the character doesn’t ever exist–it’s a puppet.
And the gangster brother wasn’t even cardboard–he was a cartoon. I couldn’t believe a thing he said or did–that wasn’t a character you were seeing, that was a Plot Engine. Without his grudge, the entire movie would fall apart, but the grudge had no existance except as the motor for the movie. It was entirely arbitrary.
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This might have worked, regardless, if the entire film stood as a meditation on violence, or on human nature, or something, but Cronenberg didn’t have anything intersting to say about either subject. I couldn’t discern a subtext, so I spent the movie feeling nothing but the usual movie manipulation, and nothing else.
Clearly, you should have stayed home.
There could have been a really interesting movie, with probably not much more than few script tweaks or maybe even a different edit.
For instance, the wife character begins horrified at her husband’s violent past, but as the external threats mount, she’s gradually seduced by the lure of violence, abandoning the principles she had when her life was at peace. That’s both interesting and hugely timely, but this transition is ignored in the film.
And the threat isn’t really external, after all. The hero and the crime boss are brothers. In literary terms, they double each other. They’re really one character split in two–the good me and the bad me.
So the threat that menaces the wife’s family–the threat that her husband’s murderous past saves them from, and which brings her to embrace that violence is her husband himself–literally in the form of his ‘brother’, but figuratively him: his violent nature, or his history of violence.
Playing up either of these would have made for a much richer film, IMO.