A reinvented Viggo Mortensen (with the physical appearance and steely sublimited strength of Kirk Douglas) plays a small town family man who may or may not be what he seems in David Cronenberg's deft reimagining of noir. Ever since "M. Butterfly" (with the exception of "eXistenZ") Cronenberg has been expanding upon one of his major themes, the horrors within ourselves that find their manifestations in extensions of the human body, seeing now these horrors turning within, and "A History Of Violence" is his cleanest exploration of his concerns yet, starting with a facile Rockwell-type depiction of rural Indiana living, building to a tough, Philly-mobster denouement, and concluding on a quiet, deliciously open-ended grace note. While Cronenberg's approach this time may be more accessible to general audiences, sacrificing the brilliantly messy visualization of the psyche in his previous feature "Spider", his conclusions are no less troubling.