The Cinema is Safe from now On

Last night something happened that has changed the face of cinema for me forever.

Ordinarily when I go to the cinema, I’m always worried that the film I’m going to see will be shit. If I’m not being entertained it’s a miserable experience for me, I hate being sat in a crappy seat with no leg room being bored. Be Cool, the Matrix reloaded and revolutions, Kingdom of Heaven, Daredevil, Spiderman and War of the Worlds are just a few of the horrible cinema experiences I’ve endured. Each and every time I vow that I wont get trapped seeing a shit film again.

Well last night that all changed. Last night I saw a film that was the pinnacle of bad film making. No film could ever reach the sheer dizzying heights of terrible cinema that David Cronenberg’s “A History of Violence” reached last night. I will never fear the cinema again, for I will always have in my mind that the film I’m about to see can’t possibly be as bad as the horrific display I experienced on Saturday the 24th September 2005.

Literally everything about this film was bad. Ordinarily when a film is bad and you’re telling people about it you can say the acting was terrible or the story was illogical, you can specify certain things that you can attribute the films crappiness to. Well there’s no point doing that with this film, because every single aspect of it was utterly reprehensible . Think of a good quality, this film didn’t have it.

I was ready to walk out of this film within two minutes. It opens up with two ugly morons walking ridiculously slowly to their car outside a shitty motel in a scene that just screamed “I WANT TO BE PULP FICTION!”. It was boring and shit and made me want to die.

What felt like hours later, this scene finally ended, only for another stretched out pointless one to begin. A little girl wakes up screaming, and Aragon comes running in to comfort her. She explains she has seen monsters in her room. Aragon’s son then comes in and asks what the commotion is, and Aragon explains that she had dreamt monsters were in her room. Aragon’s wife then comes in to the room to find out what the commotion is, and Aragon explains that she had dreamt monsters were in her room.

At this point I lent over to my friend and asked what the girl had dreamt about, as I didn’t feel the film had made this utterly unimportant fact clear enough what with only telling us three times. Once everybody has been told about the monsters in her room we are now supposed to have been given a strong impression of the strength of their family bond. We’re actually just bored. Next horrible scene…

Aragon’s son is playing baseball. The school jock is batting and he is cocky and brash. He smugly proclaims he is about to win the game, and smashes the ball away with consummate ease. As he confidently strolls around the bases, Aragon’s son catches the ball, and school jocks team lose. Cut to school jock giving Aragon’s son evil eyes and backing away clearly planning vengeance.

This scene clearly makes sense because having got to the age of 17 in America playing baseball for probably his entire life, school jock would never have experienced the ignominy of somebody catching him out, and he would be furious at this unprecedented event. This is the start of the most pointless sub-plot any film has ever had.

So far the film has been running for 17 hours, and everything in it has been shit. Next horrible scene…

There are some people involved in film making that just aren’t talented. These people will probably never make a good film, but there is the chance that they might fluke one, given a good group of actors or a great script, they just might get lucky. David Cronenberg is not one of these people, as this next scene illustrates he is actually sub-talented, meaning he has the amazing ability to make all the resources he has available to him less valuable than they would have been had he done absolute nothing with them.

Maria Bello plays Aragon’s wife. She is ridiculously hot and Cronenberg managed to make a scene with her having sex dressed in cheerleaders outfit boring. I did not think it was possible to achieve such a feat. If I dropped a video camera on the floor and happened to accidentally film Maria Bello having sex in a cheerleaders outfit, it would be good. Ruining this scene should not have been possible, even if you were trying. David Cronenberg made it utterly and completely unerotic and boring. This scene actually ended with laughing from the cinema audience, and not the laughing with you kind of laughing, the bad kind.

So far I’ve written over 800 words and the film hasn’t actually started yet, we are still at the stage where I assume Cronenberg is trying to set the tone, which I suppose he achieves, as we now all know how crappy the film is going to be. I’m going to have to miss out a lot of the things I hated about this film, or I’ll develop RSI from complaining about it.

So on to the fulcrum of the story. Remember the boring people that were lumbering around their car making me want to die. They walk in to Aragon’s coffee shop and decide to kill people in a completely illogical scene. They need money, Aragon offers them money, but they are criminals and criminals like killing people, so they decide to kill people instead. Aragon, suddenly realising he’s a bad ass, shoots them both. However, bad guy number one isn’t dead and stabs Aragon in the foot with a knife, so Aragon shoots him in the back of the head at point blank range. The next thing we see is a shot of bad guy number one gasping for air through his messed up face. Apparently getting shot in the back of the head from point blank range doesn’t instantly kill you.

More audience laughing.

Aragon is on now put on TV 24 hours a day across the entire nation for being a hero, because there are never shootings in America and when they happen they are national news. Ed Harris obviously sees one of these news reports and turns up saying that Aragon isn’t actually Aragon, he’s Joey, and he’s a gangster from Philly. Ed Harris is a cyclops because Joey tried to rip his eye out with barbed wire years before he became Aragon. Ed Harris tells him this, then just leaves without doing anything.

The local policeman tells Aragon that Ed Harris is a crime lord from Philly, and that he thinks Aragon is actually a guy called Joey who was a vicious gangster. Joey’s brother is also a crime lord. Ed Harris continues to not do anything. He waits so the film can have some suspense.

After some suspense, Ed Harris decides to do something. During the suspense the ridiculous and unnecessary subplot of the jock hating Aragon’s son continues, the culmination of this being a scene in which Aragon’s son, despite being a complete pussy for the entire film, suddenly turns into Robocop and beats the living piss out of the jock and two of his friends whilst yelling needless and poorly delivered profanity. This entire scene didn’t make any sense. I have no idea why it was in the film.

Ed Harris then kidnaps the boy and tries to force Aragon to come to Philly. Aragon doesn’t want to go so he kills Ed Harris and all of his men. He hits one guy in the nose one hundred and forty times forcing his nose through his brain and leaving him convulsing on the ground. I have never seen a more unrealistic fight scene. Cronenberg has now achieved the feat of making both sex and violence dull. Everybody is dead, and despite this clearly being the end of the film, the film didn’t end.

Another pointless and boring sex scene later and I’m even less attracted to Maria Bello. This time we have the pleasure of watching her get raped. Well actually at first it’s rape, but in a completely logical twist, she ends up liking it midway through. This scene served no purpose, other than to suggest to would be date rapists that just because a girl says “no”, that doesn’t mean she wont end up being OK with it once she gets going.

During the night Aragon receives a call….

(ring ring)
Aragon “Hello”
Voice “Hi Aragon, it’s your gangland brother”
Aragon “Oh hi gangland brother, I’m surprised you didn’t get in touch at the same time Ed Harris did”
Brother “Well that would have made more sense”
Aragon “Never mind, let’s just pretend that this isn’t all completely stupid”
Brother “OK. Why don’t you come to Philly”
Aragon “OK, I’ll leave now without fighting it, even though I really didn’t want to go before”

Aragon then starts driving to Philly. He passes a sign that says “650 miles to Philadelphia”. They actually film him driving and doing nothing else for about 3 minutes, which was just enough time for a lot of the audience to be concerned they were going to show the entire journey to Philadelphia in real time. He finally gets there and meets his over acting gangland brother. I think in this scene we might have learned something about the story, but I’m not sure because the screams of people killing themselves in the cinema were drowning out the dialect.

They put some more random boring violence in the film, it was done badly and made everybody who wasn’t in the process of ending their life laugh. At the end Aragon has killed everybody in his brothers mansion. It cuts to Aragon stumbling down to the lake in the grounds of the mansion and throwing his gun into it. He then proceeds to wash himself. Washing himself in the lake was necessary because the giant mansion behind him apparently did not contain a single bathroom.

Aragon then comes back to his small town. He didn’t wear gloves throughout his murder fest and is the brother of one of the victims, so there is no way the police will ever find him. He joins his family for a meal and they sit in silence whilst solemnly and silently ending the horrible matter once and for all in an unspoken agreement. This is the only time in the entire film that the audience are in tune with the feelings of the characters, as our own personal hell is about to draw to a close.

The film mercifully ends.

The few remaining people in the cinema break out laughing at the utter and complete trainwreck that was “A History of Violence”. It is truly the worst film that has ever or will ever be made. Everybody involved in the making of this film should be arrested. It is a blight on humanity.