Seeing the top 10 lists reminded me that I never got around to sharing my opinion of David Cronenberg's A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, which I saw way back when in the fall. It was one of those movies that left me feeling very ambivalent -- it was good in its own way, but at the final scene I kind of felt like, "and then... what?" There was a 1970s feel about its ambiguity (think Carnal Knowledge, Chinatown, and The Conversation, just in the letter C); like many of the best movies of that decade, it left you without an easy answer or even a neatly tied ending. This is undoubtedly a good thing.
Unfortunately, 30 years later we are so used to movies that spoon feed us the "point" (I mean, even Pride & Prejudice had to tack on an ending with the happy couple, so we wouldn't have to "wonder" whether it worked out!) that a movie with an open ending jars the senses. So I have to admit that at first the movie left me dissatisified; damn it, I wanted the director to SHOW me what came next. We'll come back to this.
First, the plot: In a fairly idyllic Great Plains-looking farm town, Tom Stall, a very handsome guy (Viggo Mortensen), father to 2 children and husband happily married to a beautiful farm-town wife (Maria Bello), thwarts a violent robbery in the town luncheonette that he owns and runs. In doing so, he saves his co-worker's life, kills the bad guys, and attains much-unwanted national attention as a small-town hero. Shortly thereafter, some very nasty "big city" mob types (including a disfigured-by-make up Ed Harris) show up and start suggesting that Tom may in fact be a Philadelphia hit man who owes them a favor. The question of whether or not Tom is in fact a victim of mistaken identity or a man whose ugly past has caught up with him is less important to the story than how the events affect his wife and family, his relationships in his small town, and, surprisingly, his own sense of identity.
The movie is hard to describe, and it swings wildly in tone, from sensitive family drama to grisly violence to one hot-mama love scene with Viggo and Maria to gangland violence. The performances are flawless (though Ed Harris' mobster is a bit too much), and Maria Bello deserves the accolades she's received in the year-end reviews. Also of note is Ashton Holmes, who plays the couple's teen-aged son; his transformation from awkward teen to proto-vigilante is one of the movie's most dramatic and horrifyingly satisifying.
Back to the 70s ending: the question, really, is whether such violence, once released and used, can be put back in the "can," so to speak, and placed on a shelf out of reach of the children. The movie gives us suggestions of an answer; in retrospect, that is the best thing it could have done. It's a question that deserves rumination, not the quick happy ending today's Hollywood would ordinarily supply -- a direct result of that other 70s trend, the birth of the blockbusters (think Jaws, Star Wars), with their simple moral stories and satisfying endings.
Should you see it? If you like a challenge and can handle violence (at least the title is honest), I think it was worthwhile. Will it make MY top 10? You'll have to wait until January...