After a mild-mannered small-town family man, Tom (Viggo Mortensen), kills two thugs robbing his diner, the ensuing publicity brings a shiny Cadillac of bad guys to town. They think Tom is somebody they know — somebody bad; Tom say’s he ain’t. This mystery — if in fact, it is a mystery — is the focus of David Cronenberg’s drama, adapted from a graphic novel. Through vignettes strung across Tom’s dilemma, History mulls over — and occasionally flat-out depicts — man’s inclination to violence. Yet it never really probes why we celebrate some violence — in the name of defense, revenge or, as in this film, for comic relief — while condemning other episodes. History sets the stage for a provocative psychological thriller, but I found its intentions betrayed by the sparseness of the graphic-novel antecedents, leaving a lot of holes between its dramatic bursts, and by the film’s odd shifts in tone. (AH) 
This article appears in Oct 6-12, 2005.
