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Peter Howard is Wintermute, mythologist

The site of a film student and geek from Sydney, Australia. Most of the content on the site is arranged under ?bits, which you can navigate by post, month, or category. You may want to subscribe to the Atom feed.

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A History of Violence

07November2005 [directLink] [movies]

Though only 1h35, this film is too long. It’s okay all told, a take on the former-gangster’s American dream is disrupted when he’s recognised… Mortensen can be a great actor, but he didn’t have enough material to work with here — nor did anyone for that matter. The film spent too long setting up the ‘happy life’ that he had made for himself as middle-American Tom Stall; then too long in denial about whether or not he was Philly-gangster Joey Cusack, while not really exploiting the possibilities of split personality; then finally wrapped up the loose ends, but missing the ‘bigger-fish’ possibilities. Though the plotlines were closed, the film ended rather abruptly, unwilling to make a call between a happy ending and ambiguity, nor a call over Mortensen’s character’s morality. I like ambiguity in a film, but this was worse, like it wasn’t sure about whether or not it should be ambiguous, so just stopped…

« Elizabethtown :: Drop that double-u-double-u-double-u-dot »

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