Tom is a quiet man. He lives and works in a small town, and in the evenings returns home to his family, consisting of his lawyer wife and their two children. When one day he kills two robbers in self-defense, his face begins to appear in newspapers and on television, and public opinion turns him into a sort of national hero. Thus, strange characters begin to arrive in town, convinced that he is none other than a colleague of theirs who mysteriously disappeared many years earlier...
"Based on a John Wagner comic, 'A History of Violence' takes us back to the heart of his work and his obsessions: the ever-vacillating identity, paranoia, contagion, the threat expressed not only by living beings but by simple objects. As if only by reworking less refined material could Cronenberg open up the abysses hidden beneath the surface of the most familiar realities. The title itself, ambiguous and sinister, warns us: A History of Violence or A History of Violence? The story of a particular case or the genealogy of an evil that concerns us all?" (Fabio Ferzetti)
