DVD details for
A History of Violence (2005) More at IMDbPro »

David Cronenberg's drama of a small town husband and father (Viggo Mortensen) whose small town act of heroism -- saving the patrons of his diner by killing a pair of criminal psychopaths -- reveals his own repressed past as a brutal criminal. The film turns the vigilante hero story on its head as it portrays his history of violence as a hibernating virus that emerges like a reflex when his family comes under attack, and shows the reverberations of the revelation through his small town family. Maria Bello is the loving wife who finds a man she never knew under her husband's skin, and William Hurt earned an Oscar nomination for a small but memorable role as Mortensen's gangster brother in a relationship that quickly turns into Cain and Abel. Ed Harris, Ashton Holmes, Peter MacNeill and Stephen McHattie co-star.