thomas4cinema

History of Violence has received much praise last year, and some reviewers claim only the cleverly built Oscar battle between Crash and Brokeback Mountain has damaged History’s chances for best film – as on a less controversial level it is supposedly a very good film. Supposedly…. no, it really is, but I found it not as good as expected. It had a strange overall structure, with the build-up to the clash between the Aragorn … Viggo Mortensen character and the Ed Harris character well done, but culminating way too early. Everything after that was rather lame in comparison, even though William Hurt is adorable as always and cannot be blamed for not getting anything decent to do. Apart from casually dying, of course. The discrepancy between Tom Stall’s real and his fictious live (which ever is which) is not as big as it could be, Mortensen having a rather hard and worn face to begin with (being King of Gondor shows… sorry). Actually, I have to say this may be the least perfect Cronenberg film that I have seen since… hmm… The Fly? Which means it still is a pretty damn good film, but manages to underperform on a very high level.