History of Violence, A

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.

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.

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.

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.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

David Cronenberg's brilliant movie -- without a doubt one of the very best of the year.

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.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

It's Cronenberg's most mainstream work, and yet it has all the power of his creepiest nightmares.

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.

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.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

Cronenberg holds up a mirror, but he leaves it up to us to recoil at what we see.

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.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

A History of Violence poses the right question: Are those who don't study history doomed to repeat it?

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.

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.

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.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Cronenberg's movie is eerily compelling and darkly humorous. And chilling - to the bone.

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.

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.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

It ranks high on the Cronenberg scale as one of his more disturbing forays into depravity.

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?

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

Ed Harris and William Hurt deliver inspired turns as the villains.

The Hollywood Reporter Ray Bennett

Clever and fast-paced thriller.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

A sobering reflection on our culture's attitude toward violence.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Lack of depth, complexity or strangeness make this a relatively routine entry for the director.

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.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

A History of Violence is a hollow story from an empty graphic novel.

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.

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.

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.