History of Violence (2005)

Director:
David Cronenberg
Writers:
John Wagner, Vince Locke

             Arnold Schwarzenegger - no, he is too old. Silvester Stallone - nop, he is also too old. Bruce Willis - yap, you got it, he is also too old. Jean Claude Van Damme - no, he had a heart attack recently. Steven Segal - no, he is busy beating up his wives. Chuck Norris - He - Who - Must - Not - Be - Named :)

Ok, so you are wondering why we listed all of these action heroes here, well there is a good explanation for that. Prepare to meet THE hero of the heroes, the best of the best or simply put the chosen one.

You would never suspect who he is, but after watching this "masterpiece" of a movie you will realize His greatness.

             The movie, based on graphic novel, follows an ordinary family living their American dream. There is nothing unusual about them, until one day the family father, Tom Stall, becomes a local hero after killing two violent men trying to rob and hurt his customers in the diner which he owns. His act of heroism gets the attention of the local media and some unsuspecting people.

              In the beginning of this movie we see two guys doing some killing. We don't know who they are or what their reasons are, but we soon get to find out. Those same two guys were the ones that half an hour later tried to rob our Tom. Until that point we were following Tom and his family preparing for the usual work day. Tom owns a diner in the center of the town where he works and where he, the next day, becomes the local hero by killing those two guys from the beginning of the movie. The thing that catches your attention is the way and ease in which Tom got rid of them. It was as if Tom had been born with a gun in his hand. 

Until that point the movie was quite interesting. Tom became the instant news and was all over radio and TV.

Off course, Tom didn't want any fame or publicity as most people would react. That didn't prevent the news of this event from spreading and getting unwanted attention. When Tom get's back to work his diners is full of people who all came to see the hero. Among them were three suspicious people that start to provoke Tom by calling him Joey. These people are convinced that our Tom is this Joey guy although he repeatedly denies it. We could see that Tom is anxious and that there was going to be trouble, but before any incidents could have happened the three guys left. We had a feeling they would be back.

The next 20 or so minutes were boring as hell as those three guys were persistent in trying to convince Tom to accept that he is Joey and that he should go with them. When these three guys pushed Tom far enough he fought back, and when we say fought we mean he became RAMBO, dodging bullets, snapping necks etc.

              Now this is where the opening sentence of our review gets its full meaning. Tom beats every action hero up to date. Who could have ever imagined that a guy selling coffee and pies could be so dangerous. The last 15 minutes of the movie was like watching Steven Segal an Chuck Norris mixed in one person or better said like Superman in redneck outfit.

Tom is never tired, he was driving for 15 hours and when he gets to this bar he immediately orders a beer like any warm blooded American man should do. Not to forget the night in America, it lasts 24 hours. 

Anyway if you or any other member of your family did anything wrong to Tom we wouldn't like to be in your shoes. We wish our dad was like Tom.

             The Director decided that this much action could not go without sex so throughout the movie you could see some juicy sex scenes: "naked hairy pussy, 69, rough sex...". Nobody expected that, right?! So what's the problem with this movie? We have some great actors and some great acting, which we couldn't say for the actor that plays Tom's brother (you'll know what we mean), but the rest of them are great. 

Ed Harris put on the best performance of the bunch proving once again his greatness of acting skills. We think that the movie was saved by terrific cast and that it's success relies on Cronenberg's old fame (remembering The Fly, Naked Lunch, ExistenZ). No doubt Cronenberg's fans would like it. So the actors are not the problem, the problem is that the first part of the movie was interesting and professionally done, but the rest of it was like the Director decided to let his 12 year old son have some fun. In some reviews you could have read that the movie is full of brutal scenes, well, by our standards we didn't see any (if you want brutality rather watch Martyrs). Many people are overblown by this movie's premise, so to clear this out, we do understand the point. It tries to show how any of your neighbors or even member of your family who seem to be normal can turn out to be violent monster.We also see relation between past and future.

In the end we were disappointed by this movie and we don't recommend it to anyone.

Our score:
Liz: 3/10
Kyle: 4/10