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mhuntone's review
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.75
lizzye33's review
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Bullying, Death, Medical content, Murder, Physical abuse, Cursing, Violence, and Gore
Moderate: Body horror, Emotional abuse, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, and Gun violence
Minor: Alcohol and Vomit
jakekilroy's review
4.0
This thing moved swiftly and sweetly, and while there may be a lingering want for a larger story, I gotta say, it's a pretty fascinating and fun burst of violent upending. Main character's easy to root for, villains are easy to wish obliteration, and somehow the family just easily understands that their lives forever changed in an instant (hardest part to get over, honestly). There's more I suppose I desired from all this — to see him train, to see him come to be what he is and was, to see how it all unfolds in a big lotus flower design of earned revenge — but, simply put, it rips. It rips nevertheless and it likely does so because it has no need to paint a big picture, really, when it's the small town rupture that drives it all home so fast and radical.
doomfiction's review
2.0
This is one of those rare cases where the film is better than the book it was based on. MUCH better. Everything I loved about the film A HISTORY IF VIOLENCE is missing here in the book. Don't waste your time with this one.
stacys_books's review
2.0
Though this is a solid story, it's a standard one of haunted pasts and mob revenge. Tom McKenna is the congenial owner of a diner in Nowhere, U.S.A., a man who revels in his family small-town life—a life full of softball games, cookouts, and church.
But this life is shattered when two thugs show up at his diner with the intent to rob and kill. Tom successfully kills them and makes national news. Here the real trouble starts. Some mobsters from New York show up, certain he is Joey Cusack, who killed a couple of mob cohorts twenty years ago. Is it a case of mistaken identity? Or does Tom hide a dark secret?
Ironically or not, the film is better—much better, in fact, as it turns a standard mob revenge story into a character study on the nature of violence. Can a violent person truly change, and if so, how much? I won't spoil this by pontificating on the details, but suffice it to say we find out just how much Joey is left in Tom after all these years.
But this life is shattered when two thugs show up at his diner with the intent to rob and kill. Tom successfully kills them and makes national news. Here the real trouble starts. Some mobsters from New York show up, certain he is Joey Cusack, who killed a couple of mob cohorts twenty years ago. Is it a case of mistaken identity? Or does Tom hide a dark secret?
Ironically or not, the film is better—much better, in fact, as it turns a standard mob revenge story into a character study on the nature of violence. Can a violent person truly change, and if so, how much? I won't spoil this by pontificating on the details, but suffice it to say we find out just how much Joey is left in Tom after all these years.
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