The most entertaining picture of David Cronenberg’s career, A History of Violence is a daring attempt to marry two quite different genres: arthouse realism and the gunsmoke violence of a Hollywood film noir.

Viggo Mortensen is a happily married father called Tom, and his chores are as thrilling as toothpaste. He runs a diner in small-town Indiana, and would doubtless spend the rest of his days boiling chip fat if two thugs didn’t walk through the door, rob his till, and threaten his staff. The awesome efficiency with which Tom butchers these drifters turns the local bore into a reluctant media star. Pure luck, or is there something we haven’t been told?

The stakes rise when Ed Harris pitches up with a missing eye, a limo full of goons and a suspicion that Tom is not the man he claims to be. Is Mortensen the victim of mistaken identity, or is he hiding a mighty ugly past? The hint is in the title. Harris’s effort to re-acquaint our hero with old demons drives the drama into increasingly bloody corners.

Adapted from a graphic novel by John Wagner and Vince Locke, the film wittily adopts the comic book style of freezing split seconds of violence into lovingly painted stills. These surreal splinters of stylish action tear gaping holes in Mortensen’s pleas of innocence. Tom kills to preserve what’s left of his domestic life, but his credibility as the wrong man looks increasingly tenuous.

The result is deliciously lopsided. The gangster cameos are so seductive that they threaten to overwhelm the introspective trauma. William Hurt is marvellous as a deranged Mafia boss, Harris is sublime as his sardonic enforcer. What makes their antics such an interesting watch is the moral unease Cronenberg taps. The sharpest scenes are those where Mortensen turns into a stranger in front of his wife, Edie (Maria Bello), a sexy lawyer whose loyalty gradually crumbles into hysteria as her husband hardens like cement before her eyes. Even his vocabulary and accent change.

The film ingeniously divides your sympathies. It acknowledges an insatiable appetite for violent beefcake; it questions the desire to eat it.

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