Part thriller, part relationship drama, part (like any Cronenberg film) delirious meditation on the joys and perils of existence, A History of Violence deals with what happens when Tom (Viggo Mortensen), the apparently quiet, unassuming proprietor of a small-town coffee shop, confronts a couple of thugs who are terrorising his customers. Not only does he confront them: he turns the tables on them completely by killing them, thus becoming a media hero in the process. Tom’s initial modesty when the spotlight is turned on him seems somehow to make him an even greater hero. But the glare of media attention brings with it unexpected implications, which the second half of the film explores.

“The situation forces them to ask some very hard questions about themselves and their relationship,” says screenwriter Josh Olson, who adapted the story from a graphic novel from the same publishers of what would eventually become Road to Perdition. “It changes their family forever when they have to confront these issues. In this movie, things are not what they seem; we are not what we believe we are; the world is not necessarily what it seems to be on the surface. And, when things start to go wrong, Tom Stall has to look inside himself while those closest to him wonder who he is, as Tom changes from his normal, peaceful loving self in order to deal with the violence that he encounters.”

The people who feel the effects of this most immediately and profoundly are his wife, Edie, and their two children, teenage Jack and six-year-old Lucy. Jack appears to be a typical adolescent, but has so far managed to navigate the tricky waters of high school by fitting in when he wants to and being an outsider when he doesn’t. He is also the quickest to ‘learn’ the lesson of his father’s violence, confronting a bully who has been tormenting him with his own act of sudden (and shocking) retribution.