REVIEWED - A HISTORY OF VIOLENCEDavid Cronenberg's gripping drama is a devastating depiction of America's infatuation with armed response, writes Michael DwyerCOMPLETE CINEMA LISTINGS PAGE 13-16

The protagonists in David Cronenberg movies rarely conform to the image of the guy next door, unless, of course, you happen to have a neighbour who mutates into a giant insect (as in The Fly), gets off on scar fetishism (Crash), is cursed with the power of second sight (The Dead Zone), has been diagnosed with acute schizophrenia (Spider), or is one of twin gynaecologists competing with each other for the same woman (Dead Ringers).

Cronenberg's outstanding new film, ambiguously titled A History of Violence, opens so arrestingly on a shocking, cold-blooded murder that it feels strangely disconcerting when it settles into an idyllic groove, introducing the Indiana town of Millbrook as a homely place where everyone knows everyone else. Its popular focal point is the diner run by Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen), who lives in domestic bliss with his lawyer wife (Mario Bello) and their two children.

That tranquillity is soon shattered, however, when the menacing thugs from the prologue arrive in town. Stall faces up to the threat with matching aggression and reluctantly finds himself cited as a local hero and the subject of national media attention. In a parallel storyline, his teenage son (Ashton Holmes) struggles to resist the daily taunts of school bullies and the option of responding on their own primitive terms. The violence in the film is sporadic, short and sharp, but jolting and cathartic every time.

Cronenberg judiciously borrows from the template of classic westerns as a man struggles to put his personal history of violence behind him, and his dilemma is explored with directness and relevance in the contemporary context of a country that allows alarmingly lax gun laws and clearly has not learned any lessons from its own history of violence.

Just as Stall and his family are forced to face some hard questions, the audience is allowed to taste the visceral gratification of vigorously enacted revenge - and then left to ponder that response. Mortensen, never more persuasive, delves deep under the skin of the emblematically named Stall, heading an exemplary cast that also features Ed Harris and William Hurt on prime form in this thoughtfully worked out and morally complex picture that retains an urgent narrative power from beginning to end.