But Cronenberg, who has proved that he can do commercial without sacrificing vision (The Dead Zone, The Fly, and Dead Ringers), is better than this movie about a man (Lord of the Rings' Viggo Mortensen) who isn't what he seems to be, but is exactly who we think he is. It feels like something beneath him, this gag in which a serene man uncorks so much blood when pushed by evil men who intend to do evil things. Sometimes junk is junk, no matter how fancy the platter upon which it's served.
Which isn't to say that A History of Violence is useless junk. It provides a few pleasures and a few giggles; it's a comedy, after all, an action movie in which things unfold at a deliberate pace, and one co-starring William Hurt in a mobster role so over-the-top, you're surprised he doesn't need oxygen to sustain himself in the thin air up there. Even Cronenberg has advised us not to view this too seriously, insisting that it's not to be taken as tongue-in-cheek but as an outright goof, please. Perhaps all the praise heaped upon the film along the tony film-fest circuit comes from critics wanting to believe that it's more, not less than it really is; no way it's just this goofy, grisly little movie about a man, running from his past, who winds up getting stuck in the muck of shotgunned guts lying all over his café floor, right? Well, now that you mention it . . .
The movie opens like a buddies-on-the-road movie: Two guys, one lean and mean in a black jacket and the other soft and simple in a white T-shirt, stroll out of a motel room, hop into their convertible, and make small talk about moving on. The man in black goes in to pay the bill, then comes out; the dude in white then goes in and steps over a man and woman just gutted by his partner. To both, it's just no big deal, like the bodies aren't even there -- In Cold Blood, perhaps, being the point of reference here. A shaken little girl comes out of a room, and the man tells her it's OK, all's well, then pops a bullet into her head like she's a Coke can at 50 paces. Then they're off and down the road, to a small town full of easy cash for the taking.
There they run into Tom's diner, Tom being Tom Stall (Mortensen), a small-town guy living the idyllic life with his postcard-pretty wife (Maria Bello) -- whose idea of a night out is dressing like a cheerleader and shaking her pom-poms at Tom -- and their swell kids, Jack (Ashton Holmes), a magnet for high school bullies, and Sarah (Heidi Hayes), a preteen cutie-pie. Tom stalls the bad guys with a coffeepot to the face and a pistol to the gut; Cronenberg just loves showing the carnage, the trembling bits of flesh dangling off shattered bone. Tom's a hero now, a media darling on TV 24/7, but the attendant publicity brings to town more shady thugs, including scarred, one-eyed Carl Fogarty (Ed Harris), who claims that Tom inflicted his wounds back when Tom was known as Philadelphia mobster Joey Cusack. Tom claims he's got the wrong man, mister, but Carl's not to be dissuaded, and it doesn't take long to figure who's telling the truth.
The trailer for A History of Violence suggests that the entire film is constructed as a case of mistaken identity -- real Hitchcock stuff, North by Northwest set in an Indiana paradise. But Cronenberg, working from Josh Olson's nutty screenplay, dispenses with that angle quickly, knowing that the audience won't buy the wholesome "who, me?" argument for long when it's mewled by a guy who wields a shotgun far better than a spatula. The filmmakers aren't interested in that lousy tease anyway, just its ramifications: Can a man truly change? they wonder, before offering the answer: Well, no, probably not. But they know that theirs is a shrug of a question, so rather than labor over it, they set out to distract and amuse. They'd rather you laugh with, not at them. Come to think of it, a man can change, after all: Turns out that Cronenberg can make dumb, pointless movies too. As well as anyone.