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A sharp, tightly controlled crime thriller that turns a small-town self-defense shooting into a study of identity, family performance, and buried violence. It’s lean, unsettling, and often darkly funny, with strong lead performances and a memorable final stretch.
69% (549,275)
Where to watch: Max
2005 · 1h 36m · ★ 69% (549.3K)
Tom Stall had the perfect life...until he became a hero.
Director: David Cronenberg
Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello, Ed Harris
An average family is thrust into the spotlight after the father commits a seemingly self-defense murder at his diner.
David Cronenberg
New Line Cinema, BenderSpink, Media I! Filmproduktion München & Company
Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello, Ed Harris, William Hurt, Ashton Holmes, Peter MacNeill, Stephen McHattie, Greg Bryk, Kyle Schmid, Sumela Kay, Gerry Quigley, Deborah Drakeford, Heidi Hayes, Aidan Devine, Bill MacDonald, Michelle McCree, Ian Matthews, R.D. Reid, Morgan Kelly, Martha Reilly
Max
A sharp, tightly controlled crime thriller that turns a small-town self-defense shooting into a study of identity, family performance, and buried violence. It’s lean, unsettling, and often darkly funny, with strong lead performances and a memorable final stretch.
David Cronenberg takes a familiar American genre setup and makes it feel quietly corrosive. What begins as a home-invasion revenge fantasy becomes a study of how violence reshapes identity, marriage, and the myth of the ordinary family. The film is controlled and economical, but it keeps opening new wounds the longer it goes on.
Viggo Mortensen is excellent as a man trying to keep two selves from colliding, and Maria Bello gives the film much of its uneasy electricity. Ed Harris adds a bruised, almost tragic menace that keeps the whole thing from settling into simple morality. Cronenberg’s direction is clean and unsentimental, but the movie is also slyly funny in ways that make the dread land harder.
This is one of those films that looks like a genre piece on the surface and a much stranger, more intimate work underneath. It’s not about whether violence is justified so much as what it reveals once the excuses run out. If you like your thrillers lean, adult, and psychologically invasive, it’s a strong watch.
David Sims (5★) · 4298 likes
HOW DO YOU FUCK THAT UP
👽 Zara 👽 (5★) · 4109 likes
tom on the streets, joey in the sheets
#1 gizmo fan (4.5★) · 3037 likes
I think if Viggo Mortensen was in every movie ever made, the world would be a better place.
SilentDawn (5★) · 1766 likes
100 David Cronenberg has frequently questioned the barriers of our physicality when confronted with the limitless potential of technology. How our bodies react when the unnatural is able to satisfy a certain itch beyond our current evolution. He's always been on a precipice of transformation, confronted with the ghosts in the machine, broken ceilings of self and sexuality and humanism. Understanding that a new world is just around the corner, and you're turned on by it but terrified at where… more
liam f (3.5★) · 1761 likes
can't believe that no one told me Mark Zuckerberg was in this film
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identity and self-invention, family secrecy, violence and consequence, masculinity, role-playing, domestic tension, small-town America, crime and revenge
neo-western, crime thriller, psychological drama, domestic suspense, masculinity, identity crisis, small-town noir, moral ambiguity, darkly funny