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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
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You, the Living
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
History of Violence, A

Universal acclaim
Based on 37 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 503 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama | Suspense/Thriller
Written by:
Josh Olson
John Wagner (graphic novel)
Vince Locke (graphic novel)
Directed by: David Cronenberg
Release Date:
Theatrical: September 23, 2005
DVD: March 14, 2006
Running Time: 96 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: R for strong brutal violence, graphic sexuality, nudity, language and some drug use
Starring Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello, William Hurt, Ed Harris, Ashton Holmes, Heidi Hayes, Stephen McHattie, Greg Bryk, and Peter MacNeill
Tom Stall (Mortensen) is living a happy and quiet life with his lawyer wife (Bello) and their two children in the small town of Millbrook, Indiana, until one night their idyllic existence is shattered when Tom foils a vicious attempted robbery in his diner. (New Line Cinema)
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Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Other films this year will have to sweat bullets to match the explosive power and subversive wit of David Cronenberg's A History of Violence. It slams you like a body punch and then starts messing with your head.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Manohla Dargis
A masterpiece of indirection and pure visceral thrills, David Cronenberg's latest mindblower, A History of Violence, is the feel-good, feel-bad movie of the year.
Read Full Review >USA Today Mike Clark
Violence is in the spirit of the hardest-hitting film noir offerings from the '50s, but far more explicit. It's also in the spirit of the Western.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
This masterpiece, an art film deftly masquerading as a thriller, seems to celebrate small-town pastoralism and critique big-city violence, but this position turns out to be double-edged.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
David Cronenberg's brilliant movie -- without a doubt one of the very best of the year.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Michael Ferraro
This is definitely not your typical Cronenberg. No matter if you either love his cinematic oddities, or if you’re put off by them, watching A History of Violence would prove beneficial. It’s no doubt one of the best films of the year.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
It's Cronenberg's most mainstream work, and yet it has all the power of his creepiest nightmares.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir
Although Josh Olson's script was originally based on a graphic novel by John Wagner and Vince Locke, it has now unmistakably become a Cronenberg movie, and one of his finest.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
A ticking time bomb of a movie, a gripping, incendiary, casually subversive piece of work that marries pulp watchability with larger concerns without skipping a beat.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Scott Foundas
Cronenberg holds up a mirror, but he leaves it up to us to recoil at what we see.
Read Full Review >Village Voice J. Hoberman
Cronenberg's movie manages to have its cake and eat it--impersonating an action flick in its staccato mayhem while questioning these violent attractions every step of the way.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
A History of Violence poses the right question: Are those who don't study history doomed to repeat it?
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
It's a punchy, straight-up genre picture, a crime drama that might have once starred Charles Bronson or Steven Seagal.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
The film has the perverse intelligence of Cronenberg's other movies. It's not his best, but it is certainly his most accessible, least stagy work, obeying the laws of chronology and serving up characters whom we recognize as people.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
From its quiet opening sequence to its silent final shot, everything about A History of Violence is deceptive, and deceptively simple.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
Cronenberg's movie is eerily compelling and darkly humorous. And chilling - to the bone.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Seems deceptively straightforward, coming from a director with Cronenberg's quirky complexity. But think again. This is not a movie about plot, but about character.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
For all the bloodshed, it's fundamentally a cold, cold fable, the icy whisper that turns every happy thing to ash.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
It ranks high on the Cronenberg scale as one of his more disturbing forays into depravity.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Corliss
It turns a hot topic into a pretty cool entertainment--one that satisfies the viewers' need for righteous revenge while leaving them a queasy little question on the way out: Does gun diplomacy make sense only in movies? Or do Americans want it to play out in real life?
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps
Ed Harris and William Hurt deliver inspired turns as the villains.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
A sobering reflection on our culture's attitude toward violence.
Read Full Review >Empire Adam Smith
Cronenberg's best for a long time -- broad and entertaining enough for those unacquainted with the director's work, but layered with the themes of infection and mutation that have defined it.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine Ken Tucker
I'd like to hear from some women about the sole scene I didn't buy--Bello getting angry, then super-turned-on when she learns about her calm Tom's tough-guy origins--but otherwise, A History of Violence is a remarkably convincing examination of heroism, hero worship, and the seductive allure of villainy.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
But for director David Cronenberg and the commitment of his actors, A History of Violence might have been a cartoony action film. Its origins are in a cartoon, of sorts -- specifically, in a graphic novel, by John Wagner and Vince Locke.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
Solid entertainment value for the money, but those who think it's saying anything new or profound are kidding themselves.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
Although there's little wrong with the first two-thirds, A History of Violence slides onto a tangential path during its final act, and this misstep reduces the production's overall effectiveness.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Allison Benedikt
If this all sounds very heavy, well, it is, but it's also very, very funny. Cronenberg may want to say something important about violence, but he's also head over heels for it, ending each gunfight and neck-breaking with a close-up on the victim, blood either pooling behind his head or brains spilling from his face. Big laughs.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
It's absorbing and often excruciatingly suspenseful, and it gives Viggo Mortensen a strong, change-of-pace vehicle to follow up his "Lord of the Rings" triumph.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jami Bernard
Don't let the slow, deliberate pace fool you. A lot is going on in David Cronenberg's masterful A History of Violence, and you'll miss it if you blink.
Read Full Review >Variety Todd McCarthy
Lack of depth, complexity or strangeness make this a relatively routine entry for the director.
Read Full Review >Slate David Edelstein
Over-the-top and shockingly vicious. But what strikes some critics as complexity feels to me like shame--the shame of Cronenberg, an uncompromising director whose bloodshed has always been genuinely horrifying.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
A History of Violence is a hollow story from an empty graphic novel.
Read Full Review >The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann
This sort of investigation has been done so masterfully by Sam Peckinpah in "The Wild Bunch" and Oliver Stone in "Natural Born Killers" that, in a sternly utilitarian sense, we don't need Cronenberg. He is not, as far as I have seen, in their class. He proves it again in A History of Violence.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky
Sometimes junk is junk, no matter how fancy the platter upon which it's served. Which isn't to say 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 deadpan pace.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
This peculiarly predictable picture has been calculated, or miscalculated, to set up certain expectations, fulfill them, and then do the same thing again, thereby giving us a chance to see what's coming and, at least in theory, be shocked when it actually comes.
What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 6.8 (out of 10) based on 503 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Roderic R. gave it a9:
A very solid movie. Worth watching, well made, and despite a few minor flaws, holds your attention and makes you think. What I will *NEVER* understand is the people who give movies, especially ones like this that got multiple perfect ratings and was objectively *at the very least* a decent movie, a 0. There is no way this movie gets less than a 5 if you are being objective. It would take a hauntingly bad movie to get a 2 or 3, a 0 would mean I would rather have been beat up or my wallet stolen than see it.
Danny gave it a2:
Pretty bad movie, expected a lot better from the initial critics responses. Could have been a TV movie alright. The family just seemed so fake, I couldn't relate with them. Overall I 'd avoid this movie.
Taz D. gave it a1:
The only reason I'm giving it 1 is because it starts off so promisingly. After the first 20 minutes or so we get gratuaties sex scenes, over the top violence and terrible special effects. One of the worst movies I have ever seen.
N K. gave it a7:
Absorbing and well made. I agree with critic, it do agree with some critic it does not add any great understanding. I guess my expectations were incorrect.
Jay M. gave it a10:
The best film of the year, hands down. David Cronenberg's enthralling meditation on violence, and the duality of man's nature and his capacity to change, recalls Anthony Mann's Bend of the River. Mr. Cronenberg has found his James Stewart in Viggo Mortensen; his performance is absolutely mesmerizing. One hopes that this masterpiece launches more teamings of this supremely accomplished director and his new leading man.
L K. gave it a6:
This movie kept me entertained, yet it was predictable and had little message. The acting was good, the plot nothing special.
James H. gave it a0:
Boring dull film - you think something may happen then it just ends - absolute tosh.
