Based on a graphic novel, the film was nominated for two Oscars.
Netflix has just added A History of Violence, one of the best action thriller movies of the 21st century.
Released in 2005 and based on the DC graphic novel of the same name, the film stars Viggo Mortensen (Lord of the Rings) as Tom Stall, a seemingly ordinary husband and father in a small US town whose quiet life is disrupted when a pair of petty criminals attempt to rob the diner he owns.
Killing the perpetrators with surprising skill and precision, the subsequent news coverage of Tom’s heroic actions leads his family to be visited by a threatening stranger named Carl Fogarty (Ed Harris, Westworld).
Carl alleges that the unassuming family man in fact has a very dark past.
Co-starring Maria Bello (Prisoners) and William Hurt (Body Heat), the graphic novel adaptation was directed by legendary filmmaker David Cronenberg (The Dead Zone, The Fly, Videodrome).
It earned a huge amount of acclaim upon release for its universally phenomenal performances, its string of extremely taut scenes and the deeper ways in which Cronenberg and his writer Josh Olson explore and reckon with the violence inflicted by and on Mortensen’s character.
Nominated for two Oscars – Best Supporting Actor for Hurt, Best Adapted Screenplay for Olson – the movie is now considered one of the greatest films of the 21st century.
Mortensen himself – who would later reteam with Cronenberg on the also brilliant Eastern Promises – once said of A History of Violence in an interview:
“If not the best, it’s one of the best movies I’ve ever been in. There’s no such thing as a perfect movie, but in the way that that script was handled, the way it was shot … it’s a perfect film noir movie, or it’s close to perfect I should say.”
Holding an 88% score on Rotten Tomatoes, here is a sample of some of the rave reviews A History of Violence earned:
Associated Press: “The less you know about this movie before seeing it — and you really should see it — the better.”
Denver Post: “[A] vigorously sublime take on guilt and innocence, the damned and the redeemed.”
Entertainment Weekly: “There’s not a scene wasted in the 97-minute unspooling, not a detour that doesn’t tell, surprise, horrify, delight.”
The Hollywood Reporter: “It should delight mainstream audiences who prefer their action pictures to have some depth of character, several twists in the plot and a satisfying conclusion.”
Orlando Sentinel: “David Cronenberg’s adaptation of the underwritten graphic novel of the same name is a spare, mean movie of shocking violence and wrenching moral dilemmas.”
San Jose Mercury News: “In A History of Violence, director David Cronenberg’s delirious wow of a movie about violence and sex and the American dream, cinema regains all its original power to shock and surprise.”
A History of Violence is streaming on Netflix in the UK and Ireland right now.
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