Film / A History of Violence

A History of Violence is a 2005 crime thriller film directed by David Cronenberg and written by Josh Olson, based on the 1997 graphic novel of the same name by John Wagner and Vince Locke.

Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) is an average family man, happily married to the loving Edie (Maria Bello) and a father to teenage son Jack (Ashton Holmes) and young daughter Sarah (Heidi Hayes). He lives a mild-mannered life in the small town of Millbrook, Indiana, where he works as a universally well-liked restaurant proprietor and is satisfied with his lot.

The humble existence of Tom and his family comes crashing down one night when he defends himself, his customers and his friends against two armed robbers who enter his diner. The act wins him the admiration of the townsfolk and the press as an American hero, but the widespread attention proves the last thing a simple man like Tom would ever want — for more reasons than the newfound celebrity status.

The coverage surrounding Tom leads to the arrival of a group of mobsters who firmly claim that Tom is a man involved in their past that they're on less than good terms with. While this seemingly starts out as a case of mistaken identity, its progression not only puts the safety and relationships of Tom's family more at risk, but pushes them towards discoveries that will shake them to the core — and challenge everything they know about Tom.

Being a Cronenberg film, this is not for the squeamish, though it does feature a somewhat more grounded setting and less overtly bleak tone than most of his movies. The violence is also contained into several surprisingly short parts of the movie, which helps to make it more effective.

Holds the distinction of being one of the final Hollywood films released on VHS. Contrary to what some sources say, it actually wasn't the very last — that honor later went to a rare Disney Movie Club print of Cars, but nevertheless, A History of Violence remains the last major Hollywood film with a wide release on VHS.

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This film contains examples of the following tropes:

• Action Survivor: Tom seems to be this at first. He's actually something darker, since he used to be "Crazy Fuckin' Joey" Cusack. Tom using those skills is just remembering what he learned from his days as a killer.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: Joey's teenage son is relatively stoked to find out his dad took on the mob in the original. Here, in hand with Joey's upgraded Adaptational Badass status, he's considerably more unnerved by it.
• Adaptational Location Change: Joey's home city, from New York in the comic to Philadelphia in the movie.
• Adaptational Name Change:
  • Joey Muni becomes Joey Cusack, and the McKennas become the Stalls.
  • Richie Bandetto becomes Richie Cusack, and is Joey's brother.
  • Tom/Joey's son Buzz becomes Jack.
  • John Torino becomes Carl Fogarty.
  • Sheriff Frank Carney has his first name changed to Sam.
• Adaptational Villainy:
  • Joey Muni was a young street criminal, but nothing like the "Crazy Fuckin' Joey" that the film portrays. The reason he used barb wire on Fogarty's comic counterpart was because Joey had nothing else on hand, and the man just chopped one of his fingers with an axe, leaving Joey with little option but to be pragmatic.
  • Richie Benedetto, Joey's friend and partner in crime, becomes a criminal don named Richie Cusack in the movie while in the comic his biggest crime was stealing the mob and murdering the don to avenge his brother. The NYPD officiously praises the two boys for what they did.
• Agony of the Feet: During their fight, Leland manages to blindside Tom with a knife through the top of his right foot. It doesn't do Leland any good, as Tom responds by shooting him in the head, but Tom spends the rest of the film limping as a result of the wound.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Edie seems far more attracted to Tom when she finds out about his potential violent past, to the point of them having rough, desperate sex on the stairs. She doesn't seem proud of it, though.
• All Guys Want Cheerleaders: Invoked in an early scene during which Edie dresses up as a cheerleader to seduce her husband, figuring he'll enjoy it since the two of them "never got to be teenagers together".
• Attempted Rape: Tom is willing to let the two thugs at the beginning of the movie rob his diner, but he snaps when one of them tries to rape the waitress. Later on, Tom borderline-attempts to take his wife by force. After he realizes what he's doing and tries to stop, she grabs him and pulls him back in.
• Ax-Crazy:
  • This was Joey in a nutshell. He tore up Fogarty's face and blinded his left eye with barbed wire. Even other hardened criminals were afraid of him; they didn't call him "Crazy Fuckin' Joey" for no good reason. A good example of this is after Jack kills Fogarty by shooting him in the back at point-blank range, for a moment, Tom's expression is one of psychotic glee before he catches himself. As Edie later comments, when she looked outside at that moment, she saw Joey.
  • Also, Leland and Billy. The two literally rob, rape, and murder everyone they come across and generally act extremely hostile. The aftermath of the motel massacre in the beginning and their attempted robbery of Tom's diner perfectly encapsulate this, as they are both willing to go to such unnecessarily violent lengths to achieve their ends.
• Becoming the Mask: Tom/Joey appears not to recognize Fogarty at first, and David Cronenberg suggested in the commentary that this is because he's bought into his role so much.
• Beware the Nice Ones:
  • Tom is thought of as one of the nicest people in Millbrook; he's also clearly the most deadly. Possibly a deconstruction, as the film suggests that no truly 'nice' person would be this competent and ruthless at hand-to-hand combat. Rather, the skill set comes from years of practice, and associating with very unpleasant people, doing very unpleasant things.
  • Also, Jack. When he finally snaps and turns the table on the bullies, he opens up one very frightening can of whoop-ass.
    Jack: Are you laughing? Are you laughing NOW, you motherfuckin' cock-sucking piece of shit?!
• Big Damn Heroes: Deconstructed. Jack shooting Carl in the back with the family shotgun just as he's about to off Tom isn't portrayed as a badass moment, more as Jack going into complete fight-or-flight and functioning on mental autopilot, as he's in total shock after he pulls the trigger.
• Bittersweet Ending: All the mobsters are dead, but Tom/Joey has alienated his son and his wife in the process, possibly irreversibly. He also has to kill his own brother to put an end to all the madness. Still, it is implied that his family has decided to accept him for who he his, so there's hope.
• Boring, but Practical: Joey's fighting style consists of simple, but brutally effective crippling strikes. He has a particular fondness for crushing windpipes.
• Chekhov's Gun: When Tom sees a suspicious car headed towards his home at work, he runs home and calls Edie to tell her to load their shotgun. While it ends up being a false alarm that triggered a post-traumatic response in Tom, he ends up taking the gun when Carl and his men arrive. While Carl forces him to drop it, Jack ends up using it to kill him as he's about to kill Tom.
• Chekhov's Gunman: After the Stalls' initial encounter with Carl Fogarty and his men, their sheriff friend Sam tells them he couldn't find anything on the Joey Cusack they were after, only a man named Richie Cusack who heads a mob in Philadelphia. Sure enough, Richie decides to call up his brother late in the movie and demand a meeting.
• Combat Pragmatist:
  • Tom. He can kill an armed man with his bare hands if he has to, but why bother to use your bare hands when there's a pot of hot coffee nearby?
  • When Jack comes to the conclusion that Bobby and his buddy will not allow him to leave, he quickly takes out Bobby's buddy out by kicking him square in the nuts, and giving Bobby a swift sucker-punch to the face before he can react, then using Bobby's confusion at being caught off-guard to his advantage by knocking the wind out of him by repeatedly slamming him into a locker, before finishing him off by kicking him while he's down.
• Contract on the Hitman: The mob has one out on Joey, which makes life difficult for Tom. It's not for the usual reasons, though: Joey attacked Fogarty, a made man, and has been on the run ever since.
• Conveniently Unverifiable Cover Story: Carl tells Edie that the life story Tom has told her is one of these.
• Cornered Rattlesnake: Jack always attempts to Turn the Other Cheek and walk away from a few bullies, even after they keep egging him on to fight. When said bullies physically prevent Jack from leaving school, Jack snaps on them, sending both of them to the hospital with how ferociously he attacks them.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Leland has a coffee pot half-full of boiling hot coffee broken over his head, with shards of glass cutting up his face badly, and gets shot in the back of his head by Tom at point-blank range. This breaks his lower jaw in graphic detail, leaving him to twitch and drown in a pool of his own blood.
• Dark and Troubled Past: The crux of the movie is whether or not Tom has one. He does, and quite a dark one at that. Tom is "Crazy Fuckin' Joey" Cusack, a known killer. Tom is just trying to move past it.
• Deconstructor Fleet: The film basically takes all the typical action tropes and turns them on their head as disturbing, if not horrific, when placed in the person of a small-town family man.
• Diner Brawl: The plot kicks-off after one of these. Tom is in the diner that is being robbed, and defends himself. However, what Tom does to the robbers is so brutal that it greatly disturbs him.
• Dismissive Kick: Edie kicks her foot away from Tom's grasp when he tries to stop her from walking away from him during a fight. She does it again after having sex with Tom on the staircase to show her disgust at him.
• Double-Meaning Title: The film's title refers to the literal history of violence Tom is revealed to have and the film's thematic focus on violence's use throughout history to settle disputes, reflected both through Tom and Jack. Roger Ebert also threw out the possibility of a third meaning in that it alludes to the violence of Darwinian evolution, with the film very much being about the survival of the fittest; he even quotes Cronenberg calling himself a Darwinian.
• Down on the Farm: Millbrook is depicted as a typical midwestern town, and the Stall family lives in a farmhouse.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Richie has this reaction to what Joey does to Fogarty; in addition to marring his reputation, he says it was disgusting.
  "Jesus, Joey, you took his eye. Barbed wire, was it? That's disgusting."
• Eye Scream: Carl Fogarty is blind in his left eye, which in his backstory Joey attempted to rip out with barbed wire.
• Fan Disservice: The second time Tom and Edie have sex. It's rough, violent, occurs on a set of stairs, and seems to function as a purge of their negative emotions towards each other more than anything. The sex is also both preceded and followed by Tom forcefully chasing after and grabbing at Edie, who hits him as she runs.
• Fanservice: The first time the two have sex, however, is intimate on both ends, topped off by Edie wearing a hot cheerleader costume for role-play complete with a famous panty shot.
• Facial Horror: Some of Joey's brutal methods include shooting a man in the head point-blank, causing his lower jaw to blow up in graphic detail, as well as punching another man's nose in back of their head.
• Foreshadowing: Many hints are dropped throughout the movie that Tom may be more than he seems. The big question then becomes whether he is what Carl Fogarty says he is. The diner scene in particular is rich with this.
  • The diner scene obviously shows that Tom can be exceptionally brutal and efficient at killing people (he even manages to disarm one of the robbers with just a coffee pot), but there are also more subtle clues at work, mostly by comparing Tom's reactions to everyone else in the diner. When the robbers first enter the diner, Tom reads them like an open book and tries to get rid of them non-violently by refusing to serve them coffee. When the robbers refuse to leave and first start acting upset, everyone else visibly has fearful or at least disturbed reactions; their hands shake, they freeze in place or startle, and their voices quiver. Tom never changes the way he carries himself or his tone of voice, and a very quick shot of him pouring coffee for the robbers shows that his hand is perfectly steady.
  • He then gives the waitress permission to leave as a gambit; if the robbers let her leave, they’re allowing a witness who can describe them to leave, and the smart decision in that case would be to abandon the robbery altogether or make sure nobody is hurt, so they’ll be a low priority target for police. If they stop the waitress from leaving (which they do). it’s a very strong sign that they are all in on the robbery and intend to violently silence the customers and staff. This further annoys the older robber because he realizes what Tom is doing, and that Tom is not playing by their rules and is trying to break them off of their usual routine.
  • Tom doesn't show any fear even when the robbers pull out their pieces. Instead, he is calmly observing, looking for an opening to attack and for the robbers to lower their guard. Also, the fact that Tom even passes up one opportunity to start fighting back because he realizes the timing isn't right and the older robber isn't distracted enough shows how calculated he is in his actions, and that he is not acting on impulse or instinct. When Tom does disarm one of the robbers, he never lets go of the gun, not even due to the pain and surprise of being stabbed in the foot.
  • Tom's aiming is also surprisingly precise for someone who is supposed to be your typical mild-mannered everyman, as he successfully shoots the younger robber three times in the torso^note and, mind you, this is not point blank range. Compare this to the shots fired by the robber in question, as he tries to shoot Tom three times, but none of the fired shots hits him, and the robber noticeably fumbles when trying to reach for his gun.
  • Finally, there is a split-second moment of hesitation when Tom is about to gun down the older robber, realizing that the man is no longer much of a threat, yet he does it anyways. After the entire ordeal, Tom's facial expression indicates that something from his past awoke amidst the chaos, but he is not entirely sure what.
  • Later at the hospital, Tom is watching TV in his hospital bed and sees his heroic deed being broadcasted on every news bulletin in every channel. Instead of somewhat enjoying the positive publicity this has brought him, Tom looks worried. Although being celebrated as a hero and especially after such an unfortunate ordeal, you'd be hard-pressed to believe anyone wants to be reminded of the events of the evening over and over again. Yet, Tom looks significantly more distressed here than when he was being threatened by the robbers in question, indicating he realizes his cover was blown.
  • Afterwards, Tom doesn't express any signs of PTSD whatsoever despite being nearly killed and is back at work a few days later like nothing happened.
  • When Tom is interviewed by a news reporter after the robbery, he tries to downplay what he did, and is reluctant to talk about it. The reporter takes a moment to highlight that Tom went way beyond an average Joe in handling the robbers.
  • Jack violently snaps when finally pushed too far by the bullies, hinting that the violent nature runs in Tom's bloodline, and that Jack is capable of more violence than one would ever think from looking at a skinny, dorky teen.
  • Tom and Jack have a heated argument about the aforementioned fight in the school. When Tom says that "in this family, we do not solve our problems by hitting people," Jack retorts, "No, in this family, we shoot them!" Tom immediately snaps and gives Jack a slap on the cheek, proving his own hypocrisy.
  • Tom's perfect little small town life and his perfect little marriage and family all seem phony and too cartoonishly idyllic to be believable. That's because it is. Tom's identity and entire life are phony and hide his original self. Some people think the cornball sweetness of the town before the diner robbery is poor direction, writing, or acting, but it's very much intentional as foreshadowing that not all is what it seems to be in Tom's life.
• Gossip Evolution: A downplayed case: when Joey is returns to Philadelphia, a story is mentioned about Joey having sex with a certain waitress right in the restaurant where she worked in the middle and in front of customers. A confused Joey responds that he never had sex with the woman at all, let alone in such circumstances. It just goes to show that along with all the stories about Crazy Joey that are deserved (such as how uncannily good he is at killing people or surviving against seemingly impossible of), there are many that are also exaggerated or made up entirely.
• Groin Attack: Deconstructed and Played for Drama. The first move Jack makes when he finally snaps from being bullied is to kick one of his bullies in the groin as hard as he can, which instantly takes that bully out of the ensuing fight. A solid shot to the crotch can be incapacitating, to the point that (as is later being discussed) the guy ends up needing hospitalization from how hard Jack kicked him.
• Gross-Up Close-Up: While the film's portrayal of violence is mostly quite realistic, Cronenberg shows a bit of his affinity for viscera through particularly excruciating close-ups on the bloodied, mangled faces of the victims. The highlight has to be Leland's lower jaw being completely destroyed after Tom shoots him in the head, with a massive exit wound out the side of his face.
• Hate Sink: Bobby stands out as the biggest Jerkass in a setting full of violent and ruthless mobsters despite being just a school bully (even if he is a particularly vicious one) for Jack. Bobby simply won't leave Jack alone, constantly egging him on to fight in spite of Jack trying to Turn the Other Cheek multiple times. That said, the movie does show the realistic consequences of Jack giving Bobby a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: instant suspension from school and possible criminal charges.
• Home Field Advantage: Deconstructed and averted. When murderous mobsters come knocking on your door, your house is just a house.
• Improvised Weapon:
  • During the robbery scene, Tom blinds and disables one of the robbers with a pot of hot coffee broken on the side of his head.
  • Joey also is apparently quite good at using these, if Fogarty is to be believed: Joey once used barbed wire on Fogarty's face, which nearly took out and indeed did incapacitate Fogarty's eye. The reason that he's called "Crazy Fuckin' Joey" is because he could use even the simplest of things in often brutal ways.
• Interplay of Sex and Violence: Tom and Edie have sex twice in the film. The first time is at the fun end of wholesome. The second time… it's violent and especially not sexy.
• The Irish Mob: Carl and company are members and claim Tom is one as well. Interestingly enough, their conventions and traits tend to more closely resemble The Mafia, particularly in their use of made men (which do not exist in the Irish mob), and also in their extravagant lifestyle. Nevertheless, every gangster in the film has an Irish surname, ensuring that this trope is in effect.
• I Should Have Done This Years Ago:
  Tom: I should've killed you back in Philly.
  Carl: Yeah, Joey...you should have.
• Jawbreaker: When Tom shoots the robber in the head, the bullet passes through his head and exits in such a way that his jaw is shattered. The camera even gives a nice close-up shot of the huge hole in the side of the robber's face as he struggles to hold onto his life.
• Jerk Jock: The bully Bobby who torments Jack at school is a relatively straight example of this, though even his teammates think Bobby's taking it too far when Jack clearly has no interest in fighting him.
• Kids Are Cruel: Richie fondly recalls that when their mother brought the newborn Joey from the hospital, he tried to strangle him in his crib.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: The two psychos at the beginning of the film mistake Tom for a hapless, small-town hick; it's the last mistake they ever make.
• Losing a Shoe in the Struggle: Edie ends up losing both of her shoes during a fight with Tom. The first one comes off when she's physically fighting with him as he is trying to stop her from leaving. The second one comes off as they're having passionate violent sex on the staircase.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: The mob is made of ruthless killers and Joey used to be an armed maniac in its employ, but they all look like saints when compared with the Serial Killers from the first act, going on a cross-country rampage for shits and giggles, rather than for business or self-preservation.
• The Maiden Name Debate: Edie is furious that her last name is literally meaningless, as "Stall" is just a false name picked for availability by Tom.
• Making Love in All the Wrong Places: Edie may be disgusted by her husband's lies and past crimes, but damn it if she doesn't find him hot enough to do it on a staircase.
• Mugging the Monster:
  • If the robbers had only known how much Tom would fight back, they might have picked a different diner. They didn't, and they end up dead for it.
  • The two bullies who tried to intimidate Jack in school find themselves hospitalized when Jack hits his Rage Breaking Point.
    • The bullies avert this earlier in the movie, however. They nearly get into a car accident with the pair of robbers, and the lead bully starts to try to say something to them, but then he gets a look at the two men, and something he sees in them makes him just freeze and let them go by without a word. Judging by an exchange he has with the other bully, he's deeply freaked out by something he sensed about the two.
      Sidekick Bully: Who the fuck was that?
      Lead Bully: [scared and barely hiding it] I don't know...and I don't wanna know. [Drives off in the opposite direction at high speed]
• Never Bring a Knife to a Gun Fight: Tom has just unloaded four bullets into Billy's chest. What's his companion Leland decide to do? Pull a knife and stab Tom in the foot. Tom then pulls the trigger at point blank range from the robber's head, blowing off part of the guy's jaw upon the bullet's exit. Leland is probably expecting the knife to incapacitate Tom but Tom's gun discipline still works fine.
• No Ending: The mobsters are all dead, but whether Tom and Edie's marriage survives is left hanging.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Jack gives one of these to a Jerk Jock who has been making his life hell after he learns more about who his father might be. He ends up hospitalizing the poor jackass almost as well as Joey could have.
• Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here: Double subverted. Millbrook is initially presented as idyllic precisely because nothing exciting ever happens there; when the bodies start piling up, it's more upsetting and disturbing than it is exciting.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Tom, repeatedly. He used to be a mob hitman and acts like an innocent family man who would never hurt a fly. Possibly played with, as the Director's Commentary hints that Joey has spent so long pretending to be Tom and wanting to be Tom that it's very nearly become a case of Believing Their Own Lies. For example, Cronenberg states that Tom/Joey legitimately doesn't recognize Fogarty when Fogarty first comes into the diner because of this.
• Obviously Evil: Leland, the older of the robbers, looks bad news from the get go: he has cold and empty eyes, odd mannerisms and he's all dressed in black. Which is why Tom immediately tells him and Billy they're closed, trying to get rid of them without too much of a hassle. Even the older client exiting the diner and stumbling upon Leland accidentally looks a little unnerved by him.
• One-Man Army: Joey versus a house full of mobsters. They should have brought more mobsters.
• Parental Hypocrisy: When Jack is suspended from school for beating up a bully, Tom berates him for it.
  Tom: In this family, we do not solve problems by hitting people!
  Jack: No, in this family, we shoot them!
  (Tom hits Jack)
• Pay Evil unto Evil: The film deconstructs this by introducing two violent psychos who terrorize a diner then showing the result of the violence done to them. We then learn of the possible existence of a man named Crazy Fuckin' Joey Cusack, who was just as bad as those two and may or may not be Tom Stall. He is.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Upon our introduction to Jack's bully, we learn that a repeated area of mockery is his lack of physique, with both him and one of his friends calling Jack a "faggot". He's also extremely misogynistic, calling Jack's female friend a "skank" simply for standing up for him.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: The film is very different from the original comic. In the graphic novel, Tom McKenna is really Joey Muni, who went after the mob to get revenge for his friend and maintains the support of his family throughout. In the film, Tom Stall is really Joey Cusack, a former enforcer who snapped one day and has been on the run ever since. The changes shift the focus off of the action and onto the slow implosion of Tom's family.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Joey delivers one to his brother at the end of the film.
  Eddie: Jesus, Joey.
  Joey: Jesus, Richie.
• Pretty Little Headshots:
  • Averted, as you'd expect from a Cronenberg film. Tom shoots one of the robbers at the beginning of the movie in the back of the head, and his face more or less explodes as a result. Not that it stops him from trying to live, at least for a few moments.
  • Played straight with Richie, though, where he's shot point blank in the head, the bullet goes through, and a lot of blood gets out, but his head stays intact.
• Psychotic Smirk: Tom sports one briefly after Jack kills Fogarty.
• "Ray of Hope" Ending: Tom manages to kill all the mobsters, yet it's unknown whether or not he'll be able keep his family together. Still, the small gestures they show, like giving him some food when he enters rather than ignoring him, indicate acceptance, so there's hope.
• Retired Badass/Retired Monster: This is the major question of the story. Is Tom who he says he is, or is he really one of these tropes?
• The Reveal: Given the premise, there has to be one, no? Is Tom Stall actually just a normal guy who defended himself against criminals and is now the victim of mistaken identity, or is he, as Fogarty claims, a legendary mobster and killer who is now hiding behind a fake identity? Tom is Joey, but it's also slightly more complex; he's tried so hard to disassociate from his past life and create a new one that he has almost forgotten that he used to be Joey, he's buried Joey so far under the surface that he doesn't truly become Joey again until his life and the lives of his family are in danger.
• Rewatch Bonus: After learning that Tom and Joey are the same person, rewatching the film gives a whole new perspective into what Tom is feeling and thinking at certain times, and certain ambiguous expressions or shots can be interpreted in very different ways than they were the first time around. There are also many clues that Tom was Joey that likely weren't apparent during a first watch.
• Sexual Karma: Played With. At first, Tom and Edie have a pretty decent love life for a couple that's been married close to twenty years^note During their first love scene, Tom and Edie are shown changing position for a 69; in the film commentary, Cronenberg joked that it might well be the first time this position has been shown in a Hollywood movie. But after she learns that her husband may have been a vicious criminal, Edie has even more passionate (if rough, and borderline violent) sex with him.
• Smug Snake: While starting to rob Tom's diner, Leland doesn't even move from his seat and simply smugly smiles at Tom to show him how in control he is, right down to leaving it up to Tom himself to announce that he's being robbed.
• Spiritual Antithesis: Would get one just over 15 years later with Nobody - a father with a horrifically violent Mysterious Past leaves it to start a family, but is brought back into the criminal underworld upon leaving a trail of bodies. However, while A History is a serious look at the psychological toll of violence, Nobody is a dark action comedy.
• Suddenly Always Knew That: Tom, to everyone's surprise, knows how to fight and how to use a gun, and can do so calmly, efficiently, and very lethally against a pair of hardened, murderous criminals. The improbability of this given Tom's stated background is lampshaded by Carl:
  Carl: Ask him, Edie — how come he's so good at killing people?
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: The movie does not shy away from depicting the actual consequences of violence, including all the physical, mental, social, and legal trouble caused by it.
  • When one of the robbers is shot in the head, you might think a wound like that would get a Gory Discretion Shot or at least be an Instant Death Bullet. Nope. Actually dying instantly from a gunshot wound is fairly rare, and while he does die quickly, the camera first focuses on his ruined face as a result of the exit wound, showing the results of shooting someone like that, and then we see him struggling to live for several seconds before he dies.
  • When Jack retaliates against his bullies, he kicks one square in the balls and punches another so hard that blood spills onto the floor. The next scene shows Tom explaining the results: Jack has been suspended from school for fighting, the bullies he attacked are in the hospital, and one of their families is considering pressing criminal charges.
• That Man Is Dead: Tom Stall thought he made a complete break with his past as Joey Cusack, as he eventually explains to Edie… but it turns out Joey will come to the surface under the right circumstances, and the events of the film give Joey plenty of chances to do just that.
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: Unlike Leland, Billy looks completely ordinary from the two robbers, less like an ex-convict and more like a white suburban guy. Which doesn't make him any less frightening than Leland.
• Third-Person Person: In the hospital, when his wife asks him who he really is, Tom briefly talks about Joey.
  Tom: I thought I killed Joey. I buried him in the desert.
  Edie: Are you crazy? Are you like some multiple-personality schizoid? What?
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • Leland the diner robber just saw Tom blow away his accomplice Billy like acting on instinct after Tom smashed a glass coffee pitcher on his head and jumped the counter to snatch his pistol. Leland, while probably in pain from the hot coffee and seeking revenge for Billy, decides to try stabbing Tom in the foot instead of fleeing with his life, and receives a Boom, Headshot! for his troubles. Leland gambled on the knife incapacitating Tom and lost big time.
  • Richie Cusack's mooks are very incompetent. All they have to do is shoot Joey dead, but instead they try to strangle him with a wire. Perhaps they were trying not to make a mess of Richie's swanky office, but still. Ritchie even asks his injured-on-the-floor main henchman incredulously how he fucked that up.
  • Richie himself is also pretty stupid. Joey surprises one of Richie's incompetent mooks and shuts the door with Richie outside the house. So what does Richie do? He puts his gun under his armpit and searches for his key to open a door that wasn't even locked (only justifiably ASSUMING it's been locked), and totally letting his guard down when his brother opens the door.
• Took a Level in Badass: After finding out that his father may have once been a professional killer, Jack beats the hell out of a school bully who's been relentlessly tormenting him.
• Villainous Lineage: The movie frequently toys with the question of whether violent behavior is inherited or not. It seems to have a hard time making up its mind about whether In the Blood or Taught by Experience is in effect, or if the two coexist.
• Violence Is Disturbing: The entire point of the movie. It not only deliberately avoids making violence glamorous, but shows all the results in their horrific outcome — not just physical, but even legal, mental, and social. The story also explores what kind of twisted psycho it takes to be such an efficient killer as Joey. Oh, and then there's the duo of serial killers from the opening and their actions.
• Vomit Discretion Shot: When Tom confesses that he used to be Joey, Edie responds by running into the bathroom and vomiting.
• Wham Line: When Fogarty has Tom at his mercy, Tom finally reveals that he truly is the man he was accused of being.
  Fogarty: You have anything to say before I blow your brains out, you miserable prick?
  Tom: (sighs) I should've killed you back in Philly.
• Would Hurt a Child: A little girl gets shot by one of the crooks at the beginning. Given the consequences of violence in this film, it's a good thing the camera cuts away at that moment.
• Wire Fu: Averted. Joey is obviously extremely well-versed in hand-to-hand combat, but he sticks entirely to Boring, but Practical moves.
• You Have Failed Me: Richie executes one of his wounded henchmen after failing to kill Joey, despite the henchman having a clear opportunity on an unaware opponent.
  Richie: How do you fuck that up? (kick) HOW DO YOU FUCK THAT UP!? (shoots henchman)

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