Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello (I), Ed Harris (I)

10 out of 10 stars: In It's a Wonderful Life, Frank Capra created a moment that was, for him, one of ultimate terror. George Bailey (James Stewart) has come home shortly after realizing that his Uncle Billy (Thomas Mitchell) has probably just ruined their small savings and loan business by losing their weekly bank deposit.

He is brusque and cruel to his family, eventually yelling at his kids in the most threatening way. George's wife, Mary (Donna Reed) glowers at him; "George, why don't you just…" she spits. George looks at his family huddling from him and realizes from the look on their faces that, not only are they afraid of him, they don't know him, and they want him to leave.

In David Cronenberg's A History of Violence that same scenario plays out as well, though the two films could not be more different.

Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) is a sloe-eyed, quiet man who runs a small coffee shop (in the old sense, with pie and malts) in Millbrook (set in Midwest anywhere). He loves his lawyer/wife Edie (Maria Bello) and his two children, Jack (Ashton Holmes), a young man who is tormented at school by bullies, and Sarah, a very young daughter. We're not sure if Tom is Jack's father; we get the feeling that he adopted him when Jack was young. Regardless, Tom Stall is a family man.

One day two murderous drifters (played with sinister numbness by Stephen McHattie and Greg Bryke) walk into his diner and lock the door behind them. They intend to do something nasty and we've already seen them casually murder people at a motel. But Tom springs into action, killing both men with an efficiency and equanimity that is welcome and startling. And, since this is a Cronenberg film, we see the blown-off face of one of the killers; if we're going to slow down by the accident Cronenberg is going to turn our head and make us look, dammit; it's what we really want anyway.

Tom is vaulted into the national spotlight as a local hero. But his new-found recognition brings problems. It escalates the teasing that Jack faces at school and it brings into town three men, led by Carl Fogerty (Ed Harris), who believe that Tom is not who he says he is. Carl calls him "Joey Cusack" and says he had a much different life before he came to Millbrook. Joey Cusack, Fogarty says, was a crazy, remorseless killer, a sociopath with a facility for murder.

Could this pillar of the community also be a stone-cold hitman? How could his family, particularly Edie, not have known?

It is the relationship of Tom and Edie (much of which we can only guess at) that makes A History of Violence special and vaults it from just great pulp (which it largely is) to a great film. As the film unfolds we realize that, though unspoken, they've sensed things about each other that they haven't said, they've known things about each other they haven't admitted, even to themselves. And that's where Cronenberg has his most fun.

Before the bloody diner scene we see Tom and Edie on a "date," their oldest out on the town and their daughter being cared for by others. Edie has tantalized Tom by saying she's going to make up for them not being in high-school together.

"You're naughty," Tom declares, after Edie has shown up wearing a cheerleading outfit, lifting her skirt to reveal her panties. He's been taken aback at this other side of her, though he's had a child with her and lived with her for what we assume is ten or more years. Both of them have been hiding elements of their past, of themselves. In Cronenberg's film, violence is going to change all that. Violence is going to reveal both their natures.

There are several other notable scenes in A History of Violence. The opening is languorous. Cronenberg slowly follows the morning ritual of the two sociopath drifters. We watch them leave their motel room, get into their car, coast down to the main desk, and check out. Checking out for them includes killing two adults and a child, with the added burden of filling up their drinking water for the trip.

Later, there's a scene on the stairs of the Stalls' house, that is rather reminiscent of Straw Dogs, and makes a brutal, powerful statement about the tacit understanding, the bond, between Tom and Edie. It is a turning point in their relationship and the film, a recognition of what they've somewhere always both always known and accepted (and is also reminiscent of the scene in Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas where Ray Liotta pistol whips the hothead neighbor of Lorraine Bracco, turning her on). Cronenberg, however, sees this kind of attraction out to its ultimate end, the allure to the man of action and domination turns ultimately to revulsion to the same.

And the director and screenwriter Josh Olson are not done. The gripping, second act, which leads to a surprising conclusion from the mob threat, takes the film, thankfully, where the graphic novel (written by John Wagner and Vince Locke) did not. Instead of turning Tom Stall's story into a vigilante bloodbath of comic proportions, they take him on a trip to Philadelphia and a confrontation with his long, lost brother. Richie, played by William Hurt, who has some old scores to settle as well; the sequence is a piquant blend of humor and horror.

There are quibbles; the son's story is clichéd and poorly realized. That Jack has somehow inherited his father's penchant for a fiery temper and quick action is weakened by the one-note presentation of his tormentors, who are bullies more befitting John Hughes than this film.

The performances, particularly by Maria Bello are outstanding. Bello's Edie is a woman, not a girl. She's not looking for her next cosmopolitan, she's a ferocious fighter, unafraid of the worst elements of others, just of herself.

In a perfect world this film would be showered with awards, starting with her. I'd hand them out to Ed Harris, for his revenge-thirsty Carl and to William Hurt for his quick turn as Richie as well. Viggo is not really allowed, save one scene on the front lawn of the Stalls' house, to be anything more than Gary Cooper; he seems too cool and stalwart at times. Because of the gore, and because it's Cronenberg, that deserved shower of year-end recognition is unlikely to happen.

It's also too bad that there isn't an Academy Award for Best Final Scene, for the one in A History of Violence is perfect. A silent moment around a dinner table, it may be the most horrifying of Cronenberg's career, and is the very somber cousin of the reconcilliation in It's a Wonderful Life. There is an ultimate acceptance of the violence inherent in Tom Stall. And there is deep desire not to know what he's had to do and who he's had to kill, to come home. Like soldiers, like those who have to do the dirty work, we'd all rather not know what someone had to do to secure our safety, to keep the wolves at bay. We'd rather they just left it outside, and came on in for dinner. And kept quiet about it.