Well questions are brought up by this film, and the first one that arose for me was "does every recent movie have to begin with a long take?". I've been noticing it a lot lately. Although many like to track and move all over the place, this shot is just long, and I think meant to be a little boring. We get a sense that these two men may be important, and in my opinion perhaps the center of the film. As we see soon though, they aren't exactly the main characters, but certainly the catalyst for everything that's going to happen.

I don't even remember the last time a Cronenberg film played in normal theaters, so I'm damn glad this one did. I now proceed with caution when I see a film of his that he didn't write, following the somewhat droning Spider. Based on that previous film though, I think A History of Violence is leaps and bounds above it, although completely different.

The violence here is also more grotesque than I'm used to seeing in films. Cronenberg has always had an eye for disgusting visual images, so I shouldn't say I'm surprised to see some of this. I'm actually a little surprised that the murdered girl from the first "dream" sequence wasn't shown, I did think that this was a filmmaker who would go there.

Thus sets up the paradox, visually this film goes everywhere. We see the grueseome violence, but what we don't get is the backstory. We're not sure why Joey/Tom mutilated the made man, and we're not even sure when it happened. Had the film been an extra 30 minutes long these things might have been revealed, but I don't think they are too important. The film is more about the great lengths to hide your past, and the inevitability of it catching up with you. Plus I found the film successful on a purely entertaining level. I couldn't help but cheer when Tom's son unleashed some of his inborn rage, it was richly deserved. On a psychological level though it shows how he very well could follow his father's footsteps, just as the son of an alcoholic taking his first drink.