New Restoration

“Perfect … [Cronenberg’s] long-standing goal to achieve both clear-cut entertainment and detailed modernism reaches its highest point here.”

Kurosawa Kiyoshi

David Cronenberg tackles human nature and the American myth of self-reinvention in this masterful psychological thriller, one of the best films of the 2000s. (Cahiers du cinéma placed it fifth, and the film featured in our own unranked series for that decade.) Viggo Mortensen plays Tom Stall, a small-town family man who proves shockingly adept at deadly force when two sadistic thugs turn up at his modest diner. His lethal actions suggest a secret past; his wife (Maria Bello) and kids see him with new eyes; and there is unwanted attention from the media—and from a scar-faced Philadelphia gangster (Ed Harris). Cronenberg’s most widely acclaimed film received Oscar nominations for its screenplay (Josh Olson) and William Hurt’s supporting performance. Along with its follow-up Eastern Promises, History stands as the director’s final plunge into genre before his mordant and perversely meditative late period. This director-approved restoration is of the uncensored international cut.

“The film allows violence to register in any number of ways: exciting, horrific, absurd, instinctual, deplorable, logical … Cronenberg, master of multiplicity that he is, allows these impressions to exist in unnerving unison.”

Dennis Lim, Village Voice

“A masterpiece of indirection and pure visceral thrills … LIke Lynch’s Mulholland Dr. and von Trier’s Dogville, A History of Violence explores the myth and meaning of America through its dreams, nightmares, and compulsive frenzies.”

Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
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