I blame Sylvester Stallone for the current misconception. Before "Rocky" the so-called City of Brotherly Love did not exist on film except if it was about our Revolution or, more recently, about the well-to-do "Main Line" region (e.g. "The Philadelphia Story"). Mr. Stallone put "blue collar" Philly on the movie map.... unfortunately with the wrong accent. He and his co-stars all talked like New Yawkas more or less. The Philly accent is descended from Irish and Cockney patois and is impossible to reproduce phonetically, especially the distinctive vowel sounds which would make "vowel sound" more like "val sand," but not quite. Brian De Palma (who's from the area) coached his then-wife Nancy Allen into doing one for "Blow Out"; it actually wasn't bad, except she only used it for about half her dialogue. You hear it from local extras hired for productions in the "Tri-State Region" and also Baltimore, which has basically the same accent only with more of a southern tinge. But you won't hear it from anyone in "A History of Violence." Just thought I'd mention it...
Anyway if you've seen the trailer, you know the story. Elements of "The Killers" and "Cape Fear" appear as an apparently ordinary guy running a diner in Indiana (played unobtrusively by director David Cronenberg's native Canada) has to cope with the arrival of two of the nastiest buckets of movie pus since "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer." I haven't read the "graphic novel" on which this is based and it's unclear why we need to spend so much screen time with these maggots; just one glance would've confirmed for me that "they needed killin'." Then some more creepy guys show up to see the diner owner, etc.
Some interesting plot points are brought up but not delved into much. The diner owner gets pestered by the media for a while but then they vanish, even as ever more outlandish things happen to him. The smarter-than-he-appears local sheriff suspects our hero of being in the Witness Protection Program, then drops all such lines of inquiry. (In this era of computer records and the omnipresent Social Security Number, how DOES one cop a whole new identity, not just to steal from someone's credit card but to embark upon a whole new long-term existence? The hero merely remarks mysteriously that his new name "became available.") The hero's wife turns on a dime from loving to contemptuous with apparently not much curiosity how it all came about. The hero's son has issues with some bullying punks at his school but after he kicks the crap out of one of them (my favorite scene), that also is dropped. Mr. Cronenberg's early work ("Rabid," "The Brood," "Scanners," "Videodrome") was about the fleshing out (literally and gruesomely) of his own nightmarish visions but from "The Dead Zone" onwards he's mostly adapted others' source material, becoming a kind of demented William Wyler with an almost pornographic focus on imagery for it's own sake, whether it's wrecked cars in "Crash" or, here, acts of violence. It's all very matter-of-fact, no "lingering aftertaste." The performances all fit the mood except for William Hurt as the hero's long unseen gangster brother who with his Amish beard, bulging eyes, male-model attire and staccato line readings seems not only in his own movie but his own universe. It's hard to recall the promise he showed in "Body Heat," a young intelligent Everyman without the pretentious piety of a Kevin Costner.
To finish up where I began with the Philadelphiana, there's a nice moment late in the going when Viggo Mortensen buys a beer in a seedy dive and leaves his change on the bar; that's a distinct local trait, he must've done some homework. By the way I'm confused at some of the comments about Maria Bello "looking bad." Bearing in mind that we never see her at her job, I thought she and all the characters looked like real people in those circumstances. Whatever else one may think of Mr. Cronenberg's stuff, he always has his visuals down pat....
After that really painful-looking sex scene on the stairs, I wish the hero had asked his wife for a glass of "wood-er," as Philadelphians pronounce that word for some reason...
Anyway if you've seen the trailer, you know the story. Elements of "The Killers" and "Cape Fear" appear as an apparently ordinary guy running a diner in Indiana (played unobtrusively by director David Cronenberg's native Canada) has to cope with the arrival of two of the nastiest buckets of movie pus since "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer." I haven't read the "graphic novel" on which this is based and it's unclear why we need to spend so much screen time with these maggots; just one glance would've confirmed for me that "they needed killin'." Then some more creepy guys show up to see the diner owner, etc.
Some interesting plot points are brought up but not delved into much. The diner owner gets pestered by the media for a while but then they vanish, even as ever more outlandish things happen to him. The smarter-than-he-appears local sheriff suspects our hero of being in the Witness Protection Program, then drops all such lines of inquiry. (In this era of computer records and the omnipresent Social Security Number, how DOES one cop a whole new identity, not just to steal from someone's credit card but to embark upon a whole new long-term existence? The hero merely remarks mysteriously that his new name "became available.") The hero's wife turns on a dime from loving to contemptuous with apparently not much curiosity how it all came about. The hero's son has issues with some bullying punks at his school but after he kicks the crap out of one of them (my favorite scene), that also is dropped. Mr. Cronenberg's early work ("Rabid," "The Brood," "Scanners," "Videodrome") was about the fleshing out (literally and gruesomely) of his own nightmarish visions but from "The Dead Zone" onwards he's mostly adapted others' source material, becoming a kind of demented William Wyler with an almost pornographic focus on imagery for it's own sake, whether it's wrecked cars in "Crash" or, here, acts of violence. It's all very matter-of-fact, no "lingering aftertaste." The performances all fit the mood except for William Hurt as the hero's long unseen gangster brother who with his Amish beard, bulging eyes, male-model attire and staccato line readings seems not only in his own movie but his own universe. It's hard to recall the promise he showed in "Body Heat," a young intelligent Everyman without the pretentious piety of a Kevin Costner.
To finish up where I began with the Philadelphiana, there's a nice moment late in the going when Viggo Mortensen buys a beer in a seedy dive and leaves his change on the bar; that's a distinct local trait, he must've done some homework. By the way I'm confused at some of the comments about Maria Bello "looking bad." Bearing in mind that we never see her at her job, I thought she and all the characters looked like real people in those circumstances. Whatever else one may think of Mr. Cronenberg's stuff, he always has his visuals down pat....
After that really painful-looking sex scene on the stairs, I wish the hero had asked his wife for a glass of "wood-er," as Philadelphians pronounce that word for some reason...