A History of Violence

Go watch A History of Violence, the best film I've seen this year (so far). It's more shallow than ts defenders have claimed; David Edelstein's review is the only one which acknoledges that the film is in essence an exploitation film with de luxe filigrees ("Guilty pulp," he notes. "Here, you have your cake but choke on it, too."). Still, Straw Dogs it ain't. David Cronenberg's direction is his most assured since 1991's Naked Lunch, reminding me more than once of Fritz Lang's work in The Big Heat, another entry in the guilty pulp genre, lurid and bracing, with unpleasant things to say abou the relationship between violence and sex, and Lang's best American film.

As for acting, bouquets all around. Viggo Mortenson makes the transitions between cornfed Midwesterner and gangsta like the pro I never expected him to be; he's one example of an actor who knows how to move in character, a talent forgotten since the death of Burt Lancaster. Maria Bello quivers and rages with an intensity she's never quite shown before (her greatest moment: the look of disgust she gives Mortenson after their tryst on the stairs). As for William Hurt - well. If this had been a play, I would have given him a standing ovation. Imagine Sonny Corleone played by Margo Channing. His ham-on-rye-with-spicy-mustard performance summons the pity, terror, and comedy that the film's schematic, over-explicit script (its weakest element)