A History of Violence (2005)

MORTENSEN

Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) is a small-town husband and father with a happy, simple life. But there are some bad men who claim he is not who he says he is, and they want to punish him for it. ''It almost feels like an old John Ford-type Western,'' says director David Cronenberg, who points out that his movie is based ''very loosely'' on the little-known DC Comics graphic novel by the same name. ''Yet it's not reactionary or conservative the way many Westerns tend to be. It's quite subversive in a way.'' Like most of Cronenberg's films, this one goes deep inside the psychology of complex (and, in some cases, demented) characters, and includes two very, uh, unusual sex scenes. Coming from Cronenberg (The Fly, Dead Ringers), these naughty bits must be raw, intense, freaky envelope-pushers, right? ''The only two sex scenes are between a married couple,'' he says. ''Which you don't see very often in Hollywood movies. I liked the exploration of that.''