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Wallace & Gromit The Curse of the Were-Rabbit: B+ »

A thinking man's tough guy film about a small town family man named Tom Stalls (Viggo Mortensen) who becomes a local hero by killing two men who hold up his diner. The publicity that surrounds him from this incident brings around some dangerous looking men that claim that Tom is actually their former associate, Joey.

Director David Cronenberg explores different aspects of violence as well as different types, how inherent it can be in some of us and what makes it come out. When quiet, pacifist Tom is forced into action, something comes out from within him that was so deeply buried he might have even forgotten about it. It's ambiguous whether Joey is pretending to be Tom, or whether Tom supressed Joey to the point that he forgot that he ever existed. There's something strange about how the elements of Joey's life are depicted that I haven't figured out yet. Every mob guy that Joey runs across seem ineffective or comical and somewhat surreal. In fact, a lot of the tension that drives the film is lost once Ed Harris' frightening character is gone and Joey makes the trip to Philadelphia to see his brother(played by William Hurt in a brief and bizarre cameo).

The film is adapted from a graphic novel that I had never heard of and in fact Cronenberg didn't even know his film was adapted from a comic book until the night of the premiere. I think a lot of the ambiguity and surrealness is from Cronenberg's depature from the source and it makes the story more interesting.

Another fun Cronenberg fact: He freaked the cast and crew out at one point by bringing his wife in and having sex with her in front of everyone as a way of preparing Viggo Mortensen and Maria Bello for one of their graphic sex scenes. Rather than loosening the actors up it kind of freaked them out.

Posted at October 18, 2005 08:53 PM