Local Hero

As an indication of the underwhelming cinematic output of this year’s first six months, 2025 has seen an unusual level of attention for films that celebrated their 20th anniversary. Brokeback Mountain’s re-release solidified how glaring its loss for Best Picture at the Academy Awards was, as the decision to award Crash was an embarrassing blunders ever. Other 2005 films reintroduced to the market include Joe Wright’s adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and Star Wars: Episode III- Revenge of the Sith, the last installment in the science fiction franchise directed by its original creator, George Lucas.

2005 wasn’t as much an extraordinary year as it was the epitome of what’s absent in the current marketplace. A film like Capote, in which Philip Seymour Hoffman portrayed the controversial author, transcended the “Oscar bait” description to become a profound character study, and Steven Spielberg’s Munich offered a scathing analysis of the Israel-Palestine conflict without an incongruent, hopeful ending. Some of the year’s best, such as Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven and Terrence Malick’s A New World, only earned praise after their director’s cuts were widely available. It was a solid year in the commercial market; top box-office performers like Batman Begins, King Kong, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and V For Vendetta were far more artistically ambitious than the crop of populist trash that moviegoers have suffered through so far in 2025.

2005 was perhaps the last moment in which the auteurs of the previous century were still given “blank checks” to direct films for a mainstream audience. While the year debuted new films from Sydney Pollack, Jim Jarmusch, Gus Van Sant, Ron Howard, and John Singleton that didn’t light the box office on fire, these directors would soon have to barter with smaller distributors to even receive funding. That David Cronenberg was given creative control over an adaptation of a DC graphic novel is particularly noteworthy, as the “King of Body Horror” had never yielded his extremities for the sake of commercial viability.

While Cronenberg’s crude, violent works of science fiction, horror, and conspiracy fiction earned him a cult fan base throughout the 1970s, it was evident that the psychological underbelly of his text was more coherent than the schlock regularly produced by Roger Corman’s underlings. The broadened cinematic marketplace of the 1980s and cultural conservatism of the Reagan administration allowed Cronenberg to chip away at the wholesomeness of the “nuclear family;” Scanner, The Dead Zone, The Fly, and Dead Ringers all suggested an unresolved evil had masked itself within plain sight, as American institutions were incapable of evolution.

Cronenberg’s films didn’t get less bold in the next decade, but avant-garde projects like Crash or M. Butterfly didn’t have any capacity for commercial crossover when compared to the emotional hook of Jeff Goldblum’s breakdown in The Fly. A History of Violence felt like a step in a new direction for Cronenberg, as the metaphors, mythology, and spectacle were dropped for a grounded family drama set within the world of gangsters. Even if adapted from a story by the same literary publisher behind Batman and Superman, A History of Violence was a response to the “wish fulfillment” provided by vigilante films like Death Wish in the 1970s.

Viggo Mortensen gave the best performance of his career as Tom Stall, a mild-mannered family man whose life in rural Indiana has been free from serious conflict. While Stall’s recognized as a valuable member of the community, he’s embraced as a local hero after a violent attempted robbery at a local bar; Stall’s self-defense resulted in the death of two bandits, and led the local media to praise him for the lives he saved. Stall’s modesty in the aftermath may have seemed to be an indication of his character, but it's representative of his fear of discovery. Long before he was introduced to his wife, Edie (Mario Bello), Stall had lived a different life as the mafia hitman Joey Cusack.

A History of Violence is a thriller, and at 96 minutes, there’s little padding. However, Cronenberg’s interest isn’t in what Stall is capable of, but in a question about the possibility of redemption. Stall’s been free from judgment by his family and community because of their blissful ignorance, but their cluelessness has allowed him to impart moral guidance that he never could’ve delivered had they known of his past. This is best exemplified in a tense argument between Stall and his teenage son, Jack (Ashton Holmes); armed with knowledge that his father is capable of violence, Jack is less inclined to pursue peaceful solutions when bullied by senior members of his class.

Mortensen is a unique leading man, as he conveyed a history and wisdom from a young age. While this made him perfect to play the prophesied King Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, it also gave him the opaque emotionality that Cronenberg required for Stall. While he’s present in almost every frame of the film, Stall’s motivations and interiority are still relatively ambiguous by the time A History of Violence has reached its final set piece. Even if he’s professed regret about his return to crime, it's unclear if Stall’s sentiments are an act of self-delusion.

A History of Violence is a tremendously entertaining genre film, and one elevated by a performance by the late William Hurt, who earned a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his role as Tom’s duplicitous brother, Richie. Although it was only a modest box office hit, A History of Violence kicked off a successful series of collaborations between Cronenberg and Mortensen, including the mafia thriller Eastern Promises, the psychosexual biopic A Dangerous Method, and the sci-fi satire Crimes of the Future. A History of Violence may have seemed like an unusual career diversion for Cronenberg back in 2005, but two decades later, it has solidified itself as the dawn of his new era.