A History of Violence (2005) on Netflix
Tom Stall owns a diner in Millbrook, Indiana, where he lives with his wife Edie and their two children. When two men try to rob the diner, he kills them both.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb7.4/10277,265 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes88%
Trailer
Plot summary
Tom Stall has a wife, Edie, a teenage son, Jack, and a daughter, Sarah, and he runs a diner in the rural Indiana town of Millbrook. Two men on a killing spree come into the diner to rob it; a waitress is threatened, and Tom kills both of them. The town hails him as a hero and the national news media pick up the story. The attention unsettles the family, and strangers begin to take an interest in the quiet man behind the counter. The publicity strains Tom's marriage and his relationship with his children, and Jack's use of violence on a bully at school becomes an argument between father and son.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about A History of Violence (2005)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film was released on DVD and VHS on March 14, 2006, and the Los Angeles Times reported it as the last major Hollywood film to be released on VHS, excluding limited promotional releases.
- Viggo Mortensen read Olson's original script and was quite disappointed, calling it "120-odd pages of just mayhem; kind of senseless, really"; he only agreed to do the movie after meeting Cronenberg, who he says reworked the script.
- Lokesh Kanagaraj's 2023 Tamil film Leo is an adaptation of A History of Violence: "it inspired me to write Leo. A History of Violence left its mark on me and from that this movie was born. Leo is my tribute", he said.
- Harrison Ford turned down the role of Tom Stall; the shopping center scene was shot in Tottenham, Ontario, and the climactic scene at the historic Eaton Hall Mansion in King City, Ontario.
- The U.S. and European versions differ on only two fight scenes, one where Tom breaks a thug's nose and one where he stomps on another's throat; both show more blood in the European cut, which also uses a more pronounced bone-crushing sound effect.
- In behind-the-scenes footage Cronenberg said he had wanted Fogarty to retrieve the gun from his own chest cavity, but dropped the idea because the action would have been too similar to a scene from his earlier film Videodrome.
