| A History of Violence | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | David Cronenberg |
| Screenplay by | Josh Olson |
| Based on | |
| Produced by | |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Peter Suschitzky |
| Edited by | Ronald Sanders |
| Music by | Howard Shore |
Production companies |
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| Distributed by |
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Release dates |
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Running time | 96 minutes |
| Countries | |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $32 million[5] |
| Box office | $61.4 million[5] |
A History of Violence is a 2005action thriller film directed byDavid Cronenberg and written byJosh Olson. It is an adaptation of the 1997DCgraphic novel byJohn Wagner andVince Locke. The film starsViggo Mortensen,Maria Bello,Ed Harris, andWilliam Hurt. In the film, a diner owner becomes a local hero after he foils an attempted robbery, but has to face his past enemies to protect his family.
A History of Violence premiered in competition for thePalme d'Or at the2005 Cannes Film Festival and was put into a limited release in the United States on September 23, 2005, followed by a wide release on September 30, 2005. It has been described as one of the greatest films of the 2000s and has been named on various greatest of all time lists. The film was praised for its performances, screenwriting and atmosphere. William Hurt was nominated for theAcademy Award for Best Supporting Actor, and Olson was nominated forBest Adapted Screenplay. Mortensen himself praised it as "one of the best movies [he's] ever been in, if not the best".[6] It is also notable as being one of the last, if not the last, major Hollywood films to be released onVHS.[7][8]
Tom Stall is a diner owner who lives in the rural town of Millbrook,Indiana, with wife Edie, teenage son Jack, and daughter Sarah. One night, twospree killers attempt to rob the restaurant. When a waitress is threatened, Tom deftly kills both robbers with skill and precision. He is hailed as a hero and the story is picked up by the nationalnews media.
Soon after, Tom is visited byPhiladelphia-basedmobster Carl Fogarty, who alleges that Tom is actually a former mobhitman named Joey Cusack. He vehemently denies this, but Carl remains persistent and begins to stalk the Stall family. Under pressure from him and his newfound fame, Tom's relationship with his family becomes strained. Following an argument with Tom over the use of violence on a bully at his school, Jack runs away. He is caught by Carl, who, with Jack as his hostage, goes with his henchmen to the Stall house and demands that "Joey" return to Philadelphia with them. After the gangsters release Jack, Tom efficiently kills one of the two henchmen and severely injures the other, but Carl shoots and incapacitates him. Tom finally admits he is Joey. Before Carl can shoot him dead, Jack kills him.
At the hospital, Edie confronts Tom who admits to being Joey Cusack. He tells her that he ran from Philadelphia to escape his criminal past. This admission deepens the tensions in their marriage. After Tom gets out of the hospital, the local sheriff Sam expresses his concern and suspicions. Just as he is about to confess, Edie lies to Sam and convinces him to leave. The couple then gets into adomestic dispute, culminating in violent sex. Afterward, Edie and Jack continue to further distance themselves from Tom, leaving him isolated.
Tom's brother,crime boss Richie Cusack, calls him and demands his return to Philadelphia, threatening to come to Indiana if he does not. In Philadelphia, Tom learns that the mobsters he offended took out their frustrations on Richie, penalizing him financially and delaying his advancement in the organization. Tom offers to make peace, but Richie orders his men to kill his brother. Tom manages to kill most of the gangsters and escapes. As Richie and his last henchman are hunting for him, Tom kills the henchman, takes his gun, and kills Richie with a single gunshot to the head.
Tom returns home, where the atmosphere is tense and silent as the family sits around the dinner table. His young daughter eventually hands him a dinner plate. Some moments later, his son offers him a communal plate of food and Edie looks at Tom with tears in her eyes.
The film is loosely based on the original graphic novel. Screenwriter Josh Olson intended from the beginning to use the original story as a springboard to explore the themes that interested him.
Mortensen read Olson's original version of the script and "was quite disappointed. It was 120-odd pages of just mayhem; kind of senseless, really." He only agreed to do the movie after meeting with Cronenberg, who (according to Mortensen) reworked the script.[9]
Most of the film was shot inMillbrook, Ontario. The shopping centre scene was shot inTottenham, Ontario, and the climactic scene was shot at the historicEaton Hall Mansion, located inKing City, Ontario.[10]Harrison Ford turned down the role of Tom Stall.[11] Cronenberg stated that "I think it took three weeks to edit".[12]
The U.S. and European versions differ on only two fight scenes - one where Tom breaks the nose of one of Fogarty's thugs and one where he stomps on the throat of one of Richie Cusack's thugs. Both scenes display more blood flowing or gushing out of the victims in the European version. In addition, a more pronounced bone-crushing sound effect is used when Tom stomps on the thug's throat.[13]
A deleted scene, known as "Scene 44", features adream sequence in the diner, where Fogarty tells Tom he will kill his family and him, to which Tom responds by shooting him with his shotgun at close range. He then approaches Fogarty's mangled body, which raises a gun and shoots him. In behind the scenes footage, Cronenberg expressed apprehension about the scene's similarity to his previous work. He even suggested a desire to have Fogarty retrieve the gun from his chest cavity had the action not been too similar to a scene fromVideodrome.[14]
The film's title plays on multiple levels of meaning. Film criticRoger Ebert stated that Cronenberg refers to three possibilities:
... (1) a suspect with a long history of violence; (2) the historical use of violence as a means of settling disputes, and (3) the innate violence of Darwinian evolution, in which better-adapted organisms replace those less able to cope. "I am a complete Darwinian", says Cronenberg, whose new film is in many ways about the survival of the fittest—at all costs.[15]
Cronenberg himself described the film as a meditation on the human body and its relationship to violence:
For me the first fact of human existence is the human body. I'm not an atheist, but for me to turn away from any aspect of the human body to me is a philosophical betrayal. And there's a lot of art and religion whose whole purpose is to turn away from the human body. I feel in my art that my mandate is to not do that. So whether it's beautiful things—the sexuality part, or the violent part or the gooey part—it's just body fluids. It's when Elliott inDead Ringer (sic) says, "Why are there no beauty contests for the insides of bodies?" It's a thought that disturbs me. How can we be disgusted by our own bodies? That really doesn't make any human sense. It makes some animal sense but it doesn't make human sense so I'm always discussing that in my movies and in this movie in particular. I don't ever feel that I've been exploitive in a crude, vulgar way, or just doing it to get attention. It's always got a purpose which I can be very articulate about. In this movie, we've got an audience that's definitely going to applaud these acts of violence and they do because it's set up that these acts are justifiable and almost heroic at times. But I'm saying, "Okay, if you can applaud that, can you applaud this?" because this is the result of that gunshot in the head. It's not nice. And even if the violence is justifiable, the consequences of the violence are exactly the same. The body does not know what was the morality of that act. So I'm asking the audience to see if they can contain the whole experience of this violent act instead of just the heroic/dramatic one. I'm saying "Here's the really nasty effects on these nasty guys but still, the effects are very nasty." And that's the paradox and conundrum."[16]
The soundtrack toA History of Violence was released on October 11, 2005.[17] The score was composed byHoward Shore.[18]
A History of Violence premiered at theCannes Film Festival on May 16, 2005,[19] and was released in the United States on September 30 following a limited release on September 23, 2005.
The film was released onDVD and VHS formats on March 14, 2006, and was reported by theLos Angeles Times as being the last major Hollywood film to be released onVHS, excluding limited promotional releases.[7][20] It was released onBlu-ray by Warner Bros. in 2009.[21]
The film was released onUltra HD Blu-ray (alongside a remastered Blu-ray) on October 21, 2025 byThe Criterion Collection.[22]
The film started with a limited release in 14 theaters and grossed $515,992 at the box office, averaging $36,856 per theater.[23] A week later, it went on a wide release in 1,340 theaters and grossed $8.1 million over the weekend. During its entire theatrical run, the film grossed $31.5 million in the United States and a total of $61.4 million worldwide.[5]
On thereview aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes, 88% of 216 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.90/10. The website's consensus reads: "A History of Violence raises compelling and thoughtful questions about the nature of violence, while representing a return to form for director David Cronenberg in one of his more uncharacteristic pieces."[24]Metacritic, which uses aweighted average, assigned the film a score of 82 out of 100, based on 37 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[25] Audiences polled byCinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale.[26]
Rolling Stone criticPeter Travers gave the film four stars, highlighting its "explosive power and subversive wit", and lauded David Cronenberg as a "world-class director, at the top of his startlingly creative form".[27]Entertainment Weekly reviewerLisa Schwarzbaum gave the film an A, concluding that "David Cronenberg's brilliant movie" was "without a doubt one of the very best of the year".[28]
Manohla Dargis ofThe New York Times called the film a "mindblower", and noted Cronenberg's "refusal to let us indulge in movie violence without paying a price".[29]Roger Ebert also gave the film a positive review, observing, "A History of Violence seems deceptively straightforward, coming from a director with Cronenberg's quirky complexity, but think again. This is not a movie about plot, but about character." He gave it three and a half out of four stars.[15]
It was ranked the best film of 2005 in theVillage Voice Film Poll.[30]
In December 2005, it was named to theToronto International Film Festival's annual Canada's top-ten list of the year's best Canadian films.[31]
BBC film criticMark Kermode named the film the best of 2005.[32]
In 2010,Empire named the film the 448th-greatest film of all time.[33]
The French film magazineCahiers du Cinéma ranked the film as fifth place in its list of best films of the decade, 2000–2009.[34]
In his list of best films of the decade,Peter Travers named this number four, praising director David Cronenberg:
Is Canadian director David Cronenberg the most unsung maverick artist in movies? Bet on it ... Cronenberg knows violence is wired into our DNA. His film showed how we secretly crave what we publicly condemn. This is potent poison for a thriller, and unadulterated, unforgettable Cronenberg.[35]
In 2016, the film was ranked amongthe 100 greatest films since 2000 in an international critics' poll by 177 critics around the world.[36]
In 2025, it ranked number 33 onRolling Stone's list of "The 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century."[37]
| Award | Category | Nominee(s) | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Academy Awards[38] | Best Supporting Actor | William Hurt | Nominated |
| Best Adapted Screenplay | Josh Olson | Nominated | |
| American Film Institute Awards[39] | Top 10 Movie of the Year | Won | |
| Austin Film Critics Association Awards[40] | Best Supporting Actor | William Hurt | Won |
| Awards Circuit Community Awards | Best Director | David Cronenberg | Nominated |
| Best Actress in a Supporting Role | Maria Bello | Nominated | |
| Best Adapted Screenplay | Josh Olson | Runner-up | |
| Best Cinematography | Peter Suschitzky | Nominated | |
| Best Original Score | Howard Shore | Nominated | |
| Belgian Film Critics Association Awards[41] | Grand Prix | David Cronenberg | Nominated |
| Bodil Awards[42] | Best American Film | Won | |
| British Academy Film Awards[43] | Best Adapted Screenplay | Josh Olson | Nominated |
| Cahiers du Cinéma(2005) | Top 10 Film | David Cronenberg | 2nd Place |
| Cahiers du Cinéma(2010) | Best Film of the 2000s | 5th Place | |
| Cannes Film Festival[44] | Palme d'Or | Nominated | |
| Central Ohio Film Critics Association Awards[45] | Best Film | 2nd Place | |
| Best Director | David Cronenberg | Won | |
| Best Supporting Actress | Maria Bello | Won | |
| César Awards[46] | Best Foreign Film | David Cronenberg | Nominated |
| Chicago Film Critics Association Awards[47] | Best Film | Nominated | |
| Best Director | David Cronenberg | Won | |
| Best Supporting Actress | Maria Bello | Won | |
| Best Screenplay | Josh Olson | Nominated | |
| Critics' Choice Awards[48] | Best Supporting Actress | Maria Bello | Nominated |
| Dallas–Fort Worth Film Critics Association Awards | Best Picture | 8th Place | |
| David di Donatello Awards | Best Foreign Film | David Cronenberg | Nominated |
| Directors Guild of Canada Awards[49] | Outstanding Feature Film | Won | |
| Outstanding Direction – Feature Film | David Cronenberg | Won | |
| Outstanding Picture Editing – Feature Film | Ronald Sanders | Won | |
| Outstanding Production Design – Feature Film | Carol Spier | Nominated | |
| Outstanding Sound Editing – Feature Film | Alastair Gray and Michael O'Farrell | Won | |
| Edgar Allan Poe Awards[50] | Best Motion Picture Screenplay | Josh Olson(screenplay); John Wagner andVince Locke(graphic novel) | Nominated |
| Empire Awards | Best Thriller | Nominated | |
| Best Actor | Viggo Mortensen | Nominated | |
| French Syndicate of Cinema Critics Awards | Best Foreign Film | David Cronenberg | Won |
| Gold Derby Film Awards[51] | Best Motion Picture | Chris Bender, David Cronenberg andJ.C. Spink | Nominated |
| Best Director | David Cronenberg | Nominated | |
| Best Supporting Actress | Maria Bello | Nominated | |
| Best Adapted Screenplay | Josh Olson | Nominated | |
| Golden Globe Awards[52] | Best Motion Picture – Drama | Nominated | |
| Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama | Maria Bello | Nominated | |
| Golden Schmoes Awards[53] | Best Supporting Actress of the Year | Won | |
| Gotham Independent Film Awards[54] | Best Feature | David Cronenberg, Chris Bender and J.C. Spink | Nominated |
| Hollywood Legacy Awards | Writer of the Year | Josh Olson | Won |
| International Cinephile Society Awards[55] | Top 10 Films of the Year | 3rd Place | |
| Best Director | David Cronenberg | Won | |
| Best Supporting Actor | William Hurt | Runner-up | |
| Best Adapted Screenplay | Josh Olson | Runner-up | |
| International Film Music Critics Association Awards[56] | Best Original Score for a Horror/Thriller Film | Howard Shore | Won |
| International Online Cinema Awards | Best Picture | Nominated | |
| Best Director | David Cronenberg | Nominated | |
| Best Actor | Viggo Mortensen | Nominated | |
| Best Supporting Actor | William Hurt | Nominated | |
| Best Supporting Actress | Maria Bello | Nominated | |
| Best Adapted Screenplay | Josh Olson | Nominated | |
| Italian Online Movie Awards | Best Director | David Cronenberg | Nominated |
| Best Supporting Actress | Maria Bello | Nominated | |
| Kansas City Film Critics Circle Awards[57] | Best Supporting Actress | Won | |
| Las Vegas Film Critics Society Awards[58] | Best Picture | 5th Place | |
| London Film Critics Circle Awards[59] | Film of the Year | Nominated | |
| Director of the Year | David Cronenberg | Nominated | |
| Actor of the Year | Viggo Mortensen | Nominated | |
| Actress of the Year | Maria Bello | Nominated | |
| Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards[60] | Best Film | Runner-up | |
| Best Director | David Cronenberg | Runner-up | |
| Best Supporting Actor | William Hurt | Won | |
| National Board of Review Awards[61] | Top Ten Films | 5th Place | |
| National Society of Film Critics Awards[62] | Best Film | 2nd Place | |
| Best Director | David Cronenberg | Won | |
| Best Supporting Actor | Ed Harris | Won | |
| New York Film Critics Circle Awards[63] | Best Film | Runner-up | |
| Best Director | David Cronenberg | Runner-up | |
| Best Actor | Viggo Mortensen | Runner-up | |
| Best Supporting Actor | William Hurt | Won | |
| Best Supporting Actress | Maria Bello | Won | |
| North Texas Film Critics Association Awards | Best Supporting Actor | William Hurt | Won |
| Online Film & Television Association Awards[64] | Best Picture | Chris Bender, David Cronenberg and J.C. Spink | Nominated |
| Best Director | David Cronenberg | Nominated | |
| Best Supporting Actor | William Hurt | Nominated | |
| Best Supporting Actress | Maria Bello | Won | |
| Best Adapted Screenplay | Josh Olson | Nominated | |
| Best Film Editing | Ronald Sanders | Nominated | |
| Best Casting | Mark Bennett and Deirdre Brown | Nominated | |
| Best Cinematic Moment | Stair Scene | Nominated | |
| Best Official Film Website | Nominated | ||
| Online Film Critics Society Awards[65] | Best Picture | Won | |
| Best Director | David Cronenberg | Won | |
| Best Supporting Actor | William Hurt | Nominated | |
| Best Supporting Actress | Maria Bello | Won | |
| Best Adapted Screenplay | Josh Olson | Nominated | |
| Best Editing | Ronald Sanders | Nominated | |
| San Diego Film Critics Society Awards | Best Editing | Won | |
| Sant Jordi Awards | Best Foreign Film | David Cronenberg | Won |
| Satellite Awards(2005)[66] | Best Motion Picture – Drama | Nominated | |
| Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama | Viggo Mortensen | Nominated | |
| Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama | Maria Bello | Nominated | |
| Satellite Awards(2006)[67] | Outstanding Overall DVD | Nominated | |
| Saturn Awards[68] | Best Action/Adventure/Thriller Film | Nominated | |
| Best Actor | Viggo Mortensen | Nominated | |
| Best Supporting Actor | William Hurt | Nominated | |
| Scream Awards | Best Director | David Cronenberg | Nominated |
| Most Heroic Performance | Viggo Mortensen | Nominated | |
| The "Holy Sh!t"/"Jump-From-Your-Seat" Award | The diner shootout | Nominated | |
| SESC Film Festival | Best Foreign Film (Audience Award) | David Cronenberg | Won |
| Southeastern Film Critics Association Awards[69] | Best Picture | 5th Place | |
| St. Louis Film Critics Association Awards | Best Director | David Cronenberg | Nominated |
| Toronto Film Critics Association Awards[70] | Best Film | Won | |
| Best Canadian Film | Won | ||
| Best Director | David Cronenberg | Won | |
| Turkish Film Critics Association Awards | Best Foreign Film | 3rd Place | |
| USC Scripter Awards[71] | Josh Olson(screenwriter); John Wagner and Vince Locke(authors) | Nominated | |
| Utah Film Critics Association Awards[72] | Best Actress | Maria Bello | Runner-up |
| Best Supporting Actor | William Hurt | Nominated | |
| Vancouver Film Critics Circle Awards[73] | Best Director | David Cronenberg | Nominated |
| Village Voice Film Poll | Best Film | Won | |
| Best Director | David Cronenberg | Won | |
| Best Lead Performance | Viggo Mortensen | 7th Place | |
| Best Supporting Performance | Maria Bello | Won | |
| Ed Harris | 8th Place | ||
| William Hurt | 5th Place | ||
| Best Screenplay | Josh Olson | 3rd Place | |
| Writers Guild of America Awards[74] | Best Adapted Screenplay | Nominated | |
| Young Artist Awards[75] | Best Performance in a Feature Film – Young Actress Age Ten or Younger | Heidi Hayes | Nominated |
Leo, a 2023 Indian Tamil language film co-written and directed byLokesh Kanagaraj, is an adaptation ofA History of Violence.[76] Lokesh said thatLeo is his tribute to David Cronenberg'sA History of Violence. According to Lokesh, "it inspired me to writeLeo.A History of Violence left its mark on me and from that this movie was born.Leo is my tribute".[77]
