This movie quickly became painful to watch. Not because of graphic shots of bloody corpses or sex scenes, but because it is 1. Not a very engaging story and 2. Filled with terrible acting. Mortensen and Harris are okay, but Harris's role is not that of the main antagonist. He drops out of the movie before long, and the plot drags without him. Most of the supporting cast just plain stinks. The little girl, in particular, is awful. I am willing to be generous where child "actors" are concerned but every time she came on screen I just cringed. The role of the son is one of the more interesting ones and I am afraid it came out rather muddled. I believe the director was going for a poignant image of the forming of a young man's character, as shaped by school bullies and the actions of his main role model, his father. Unfortunately, the son utters lines that perhaps needed to be said to move the story along but did nothing for the development of his character. He just doesn't seem genuine--nothing in this story really does. Maria Bello has received some bad press for this but I don't think she is that bad. If one's part is written and directed middlingly well, then it stands to reason that the character will come across as very average and forgettable. The storytelling is heavy-handed and gratuitous: we have the scene that demonstrates that Stall is a loving, caring father; the scene that demonstrates that he and his wife adore each other; the scene that tells us the townspeople like and respect Stall, etc. I found these scenes to be just a series of clichés, strung together but not adding up to anything. Overall, I found this film hard to get a grip on, and not interesting enough to motivate me.
Review of A History of Violence
