A History of Violence
I went into this film expecting it to be a solid film, and while it had its moments, I felt that it was a disappointing film more then not. And I may shock some of you by comparing it to
Spiderman 3 further along in my review, but so be it.
What I like about the film is the idea in the film. The idea of creating the new persona and living it out like the previous one didn't even exist and being something and someone completely different. I think the idea is something that is very interesting, albeit not all that well pulled off in this film. There are some scenes, like the first scene with between Viggo Mortensen's character (Tom Stall) and Ed Harris' character (Carl Fogerty) in the diner. I thought that one was very good and telling about the character and interactions between the characters. However, there were equally as many forced scenes that tried to get this idea across and those really dragged down the movie.
One thing that I didn't like about this movie was the plethera of characters and the sub-plots that went along with these characters that really didn't do anything to advance the main plot of the film. There were several scenes with Stall's son in the film that really didn't make any sense or add anything to the film. The whole series of interactions at school were rather pointless. It felt like they were mixing in a little teen drama with the rest of the story, and the combination of genres were at a head in this film. And there were other scenes that really didn't make sense or add anything to the story. The whole cheerleader outfit sex scene seemed like something that was thrown in just in order to have a romance scene at that point. The set up for it and the idea of it though was a separate tangent that could have been better worked out in the film.
And besides being random the scenes that were meant to move the story forward didn't do so for the most part as there were some scenes that progressed but then simply slipped back to where they were before. When Stall's wife visits him at the hospital after his second trip there, she literally is sick at the sight of him and what has been going on because of him. But then in the first scene back from the hospital (or coming back from a police station) she covers for him and seems to have no qualms doing so. These mood swings in the film don't work well in that they don't actually progress the story but instead leave it sitting there stuck in neutral.
Finally for my comparison with
Spiderman 3. This film runs into the same problem as
Spiderman 3 in that it has to many bad guys that are too seperate from one another. We meet two at the beginning and we assume that they are going to carry some weight throughout the whole film, but the next scene we see them in, they die. Then Fogarty comes along, he has a nice run of about half the film, and then he dies. Then Ricky comes along, and he is there for about a scene, and he dies.
Spiderman 3 does this as well, except for the fact that
Spiderman 3 at least has one giant battle at the end. In this film the villains are little more then blips on a radar and really don't do much to frighten the viewer as they are there are gone.
One final good thing about the film though is that it doesn't end with a perfect "Hollywood ending", it seems to set itself up for one (which is a little disappointing in my book), but it never actually reaches that point. It definitely is set up for reconciliation, but it is clear that there is going to be a lot of time and struggles to reach a happy ending.
Overall this is a subpar film. It tries to do to much with introducing to many villains and to many sub-plots that neither the villains or the sub-plots are properly filled out. The idea is there, and it is a good one, the execution of it though is very poor.
Overall Grade: C-
Story: D
Acting: C+
Audio/Visual: B-