John Christie (johnandrewchristie)

very good

very funny abnd well done

a girtty violence film from famed canadian director david croneberg usually known for horror flicks as rabid, scanners, the dead zone and the fly and for werid flciks such as videodrome and crash comes back full circle to directing a film about violence and how it affects us all in different ways. A departure from david cronenberg comes this film about a violence man named tom stall who use to work for the mob and whoes brother Rictchie cusack is a small time gangster in boston. Tom stall for the past fifteen years has lived in a small town with a beautiful wife and a teenage son who has been picked on at school by the school bullies. When two sociopaths enter the small town after brutally murdering a convenicne store owner and his family to death, enter a small time restaurant owned by tom stall. They come into the restuarant begging for trouble. When they try to rape and harass his customers, tom stall quickly and brutally murder the two sociopaths and Tom quickly learns that by doing this will put him in the spotlight and in all the newpapers and will later bring touble to his town that he wished would never sneak back into his quiet homly life. After this incident the town even the sherriff begins to look at tom as a hero and slowly as someone they dont know anymore even his wife begins to to doubt and after his son sned the bullies at school to the hospital, tom quickly realizes his life might never be the same again. Life gets worse when an enemy of his crawls into town named Carl fogerty who begins to stalk him and his wife by telling them that he is not tom stall but tom cusack a violent hood who is Ritchie's younger brother and was sent by ritchie to bring his brother back. After the menacing carl forgety is murdered by tom's son and his men are killed by Tom, he realizes the only way this violence is going to stop and to portect his family is to acknowledge his past self and who he really is and to confrotn his older brother Ritchie played with menacing glee by William hurt. The last twenty minutes is a joy watching the two brothers confrt each other in the end. To tell you anything about what happens at the end is for you the viewer to watch and see for yourself. The film end abruptly and is somewhat disappointing sicne it does feel like if there would a sequel in the works. It just ends without any closure. A let down. Other than that and some dull moments through the middle section of the movie, the movie does contain some great work from viggo mortensen who manages a good job as to playing the nice tom stall and then quickly changing into the violence sociopath known as tom cusack, ritchie's younger brother, the films also contains some great suporting perofrmances from maria bello as the wife trying to cope with her husbands mood, stephen mcahattie as the sociopath that tries to hurt the people in the restaurant, the brilliant ed harris as a sociopath that tom almost killed fifteen years earlier and the cause of the Carl losing his eye and now wearing a patch over his right eye, and the wonderful but underused william hurt having so much fun playing Ritchie, the older brother and angry hood who could have been a big time gangster if it werent for his brother who tried to kill Carl years before. The story is good but a little over the top, the performances are quite good and david cronenberg pensuion with good storytelling and for the macabre is put to good use. a decent film with a bad ending which could have been a classic. worth renting