A History of Violence What Lurks Inside Each of Us?

Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) is a simple guy living in a simple town. He runs the local coffee shop and calls customers by their first name. The days pass peacefully and nothing much ever happens in Millbrook, Indiana. So when two criminals arrive late one night at Tom's store just before closing and threaten to kill those inside, it comes as quite a shock when Tom handily disposes of the thugs with so much precision and ease.

Instantly hailed the town hero and showered with media attention, the soft-spoken Tom wants nothing more than to get business back to normal and return to his uncomplicated and quiet life. This won't happen.

Soon after, Carl Fogarty (Ed Harris) shows up at Tom's diner and calls him Joey, referring to a former prominent member of the East Coast mafia who eventually fled into the seclusion of the witness protection program. Is Tom who he says he is or has he faked a new identity for many years as Fogarty suggests?

The action and violence referenced in the title begin to make their mark at this point. The threatening presence of Fogarty and his lackeys moves closer to Tom and his family, replacing pseudo-dangerous conversations from oppposites sides of a lunch counter.

Tom attempts to maintain restraint during mounting conflicts, but one can sense, as does his wife, Edie (Maria Bello), that Tom's skill with lethal weapons simply doesn't belong to man who runs a diner, and his violent tendencies make brief, yet abrupt, appearances.

Director David Cronenberg filmed each violent scene with the characters harming one another from close range, often within an arm's length, and usually resulting in cranial trauma. He seems to suggest that violence is an intimate part of our lives and ourselves; it's in our thoughts and difficult to escape, and, perhaps, part of our genetic code.