There are times when you watch a movie and the flow of the story comes to an abrupt halt because some character does something that just doesn't make sense. Sometimes the film overcomes this bit of illogic, though more often it just derails the film's credibility completely because it inadvertently reminds you that you are, indeed, watching a movie. David Cronenberg's A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE is an endless stream of such moments when characters' behaviors just don't ring true. One false move after another renders what could have been a passable thriller into being little more than a violent soap opera.<br /><br />The story finds Viggo Mortensen playing Tom Stalls, a small-town café owner whose peaceable bucolic life is shattered when he thwarts a holdup in his folksy little establishment. His bravery, resulting in the well-deserved deaths of a couple of traveling serial killers (who inexplicably, but conveniently pick Tom's place for a stick up), gains him unwanted national notoriety and the even more unwanted attention of a mobster who claims that Tom is really Joey Cusack, an MIA Philadelphia gangster. It could be a case of mistaken identity, or else Tom's unsavory past is catching up with him -- just as it has with all manner of gangsters, escaped cons, gunslingers and fugitive Nazi war criminals who hide in plain sight in picturesque little movie towns.<br /><br />This film wants to play itself as sort of a PULP FICTION comes to Mayberry RFD. But while Cronenberg's vision of picture postcard Medford, Indiana is archetypically American enough (though actually filmed in Canada), his villains are pure central casting stereotypes. Gangster Carl Fogarty (Ed Harris) is such a trite caricature that when he shows up out of the past to confront Stalls, you expect him to step out of his black limo wearing a pinstriped suite and a white fedora while carrying a violin case concealing a tommy gun. Meanwhile, in an annoying subplot, Tom's teenage son, Jack (Ashton Holmes) is harassed by the school bully who seems like a juvenile delinquent straight out of a 50s Hot-Rods-from-Hell B-movie. The bad guys in the film are supposed to be menacing, but we've seen them so many times they come off as unfunny jokes.<br /><br />But the transparent villainy of the bad guys is rock solid compared to the unfolding story; everyone is stupid, or at the mercy of the stupid screenplay, based tellingly on a comic book. Knowing that thugs are after him, Tom still walks to work alone along miles of desolate country roads. His wife is informed that the thugs may be heading to their isolated country house, but she doesn't call the police, let alone lock the front door. Despite numerous opportunities to quietly kill or kidnap Tom, the bad guys only confront him in public places. And worse, though Tom repeatedly risks his life to protect his family, his wife and son turn against him at the drop of a plot twist (how better to show that the prototypical happy American family is an illusion!).<br /><br />Under the guidance of a Hitchock or another such director who could have shown some dramatic irony or a wicked sense of satirical humor (as well as demanding a rewrite), this could have been a decent enough suspense drama. But director David Cronenberg opts instead to play the story with the deadpan desensitized chill so prevalent in this Tarantino age of pseudo-hip sadism. He seems intent to do what has become the norm, subtly glamorize violence as a commonplace impulse in a mundane world, simultaneously pretending to condemn brutality, while giving it backhanded approval as part of the norm. Of course, such violence is commonplace, but only in hypocritical films like this.<br /><br />A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, like KILL BILL or RESERVOIR DOGS or THE WILD BUNCH or NATURAL BORN KILLERS or GOODFELLAS or dozens of other critic's darlings, isn't about the evils of violence, but about the adrenaline rush of its own sadism. It doesn't comment on a violent society, but perpetuates that violence in the society. There isn't even a film if you remove the violence; it is one contrived and phony situation after another, all made to build to an act of gore. There is no great suspense. There is no character development. It is like an old Hollywood musical where a silly story is used as filler between musical production numbers. Everything in this film exists solely so we can see graphic scenes of people being slaughtered -- or in one disturbing and unrealistic scene, violent sex.<br /><br />In violent films like this, the director, actors and special effects people, as well as the stuntmen, the make up people, cinematographer and editor, all work together to make violent actions as cinematically jazzed up as possible. Filmmakers may spout the politically correct nonsense about how they are trying to reveal the horrible brutality of violence, but they work to create violent scenes that function as orgasms. We don't see the consequences of the senseless violence, because that would negate the ain't-it-cool impact of each burst of mayhem. If there is a consequence to the violence it is only to set things up for more violence later. Yet the violence begets violence moral of films like this is as sanctimonious and shallow as it is obvious and ultimately meaningless.