A History of Violence 4K 2005 Ultra HD 2160p

Tom Stall lives a happy and peaceful life with his wife and two children in the small town of Millbrook, Indiana. But one night, his idyllic life is shattered. While trying to prevent a robbery at his diner and save the patrons, Tom kills two traveling criminals. The news spreads throughout the area, and Tom attracts the attention of some serious people from Philadelphia...

User Review

This film somehow quietly and naturally became one of my favorites. It is very simple, clear, and at the same time profound. Profound, like life itself, which you often live without thinking, until something suddenly catches your attention and you begin to unravel its tangled threads—from the end to the beginning.

Cruelty... but who in Cronenberg's cruel film is actually cruel? It seems to me that anyone, but not Tom Stall, and not even his alter ego, Hughie, who suddenly burst out of oblivion like some kind of destructive demon. What cruel acts does he commit? He is merely defending himself from a life that is already over once and for all, but which keeps creeping into the windows and doors of his home and his restaurant, his family and his soul. Does Tom (or Hughie?) kill cruelly when his life is threatened?

Is it scary to watch him drive his nose into the skull of the killer who came for him with a few barbaric blows? Or when he breaks the neck of another killer? It's scary, death is always scary.

And to some, it may seem that Cronenberg is defending his hero from inevitable criticism. He defends him by telling a story of justified cruelty. Or, if we follow the original title, simply a story of cruelty. And everything here lines up: the brother who strangled him in his cradle, the wild criminal world into which he literally fell from that cradle, his alienation from this world, his desire to break free from it, his escape, the death of Huey and the birth of Tom... And then - his resistance to everything that tried to bring him back into this world. It seems that the director's intention was limited to this apology? Maybe, and maybe not.

Because I see a completely different cruelty in this film: a wife who, not long ago, claimed that her husband was the best man in the world, but after everything that happened, became a complete stranger to him. A son who is so similar to his father—meek and humble, until the anger that has been building up for so long suddenly bursts out. Similar and unwilling to understand and forgive his father, who is not only who he has been to him since birth, but also someone he has never been to him. His daughter, whom Tom so lovingly comforts at night when she cries, frightened by the monsters in her dreams. And who freezes, shutting herself off from her father when these monsters from the darkness of night catch up with him so unexpectedly.

And all of them — his wife, son, and daughter — are much worse than Tom. A cruel and terrible life made him cruel and terrible. And what did he go through to become someone else? As he himself says, he had to die and be born again, so that before meeting his future wife, he didn't even exist...

And what made them so cruel? A small but telling episode. Tom tries to talk to his wife when his past has already been revealed, to explain himself to her. He is as polite as ever. But she... She breaks free and hits him. And then the beast in him comes alive for a moment. He knocks her down and is ready to rape her. However, in a second, Tom's gaze changes completely — he is horrified by what he is doing and wants to get up... But his wife won't let him go — she wants to enjoy copulating with this beast... So which of them is truly cruel? And which of them is more animalistic?

The final scene seems to fade away, dissolving into Tom's gaze. A gaze full of fear and hope. Fear of being rejected. Hope for forgiveness.

...I may be wrong, but it seems to me that it was Tom who should have decided whether to forgive or not. Although he was not faced with this question. His cruelty had its own history. And his loved ones... they were just cruel in themselves.

Info Video

Codec: HEVC / H.265 (97.8 Mb/s)
Resolution: Native 4K (2160p)
HDR: Dolby Vision, HDR10
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1

Info Audio

#English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
#Italian: : DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1

Info Subtitles

English SDH, Bulgarian, Chinese (Mandarin Traditional), Chinese (Mandarin Simplified), Chinese (Cantonese Traditional), Czech, Estonian, French (Parisian), French (Canadian), German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese (Iberian), Russian, Slovenian, Spanish (Latin American), Spanish (Castilian), Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian.