I'm a firm believer that the theatre experience can make or break a movie, and unfortunately, the experience screwed this movie up for me.
I was thinking that since it's only playing in a couple of theatres and Serenity opened this weekend, that it wouldn't be so bad. However when I walked in the auditorium, sure enough, packed. Dammit...
Somehow I always manage to find a seat near the couple that feels the need to comment during the movie. These two people usually are a man and woman and the man feels the need to impress the woman by either attempting to predict what's going to happen or commenting on what just happened. This usually also gives the woman an excuse to either go "Unh..." after every action sequence in the movie or ask her date why something happened.
Seriously, there were 8 people in the auditorium when I went to see "G" last week and the talking couple sat right across from me.
Today's experience was also tempered by another couple behind me who were evidently fooled by the title of a movie called "A History of Violence" and were appropriately appalled by what they saw onscreen.
Now on to the review.
Let me start by saying I enjoyed the film for what it was. Viggo Mortensen was understated enough to make people wonder if he really was the guy everybody thought he was and Maria Bello (who can always be counted on to be naked) was pretty damn good as his wife.
If you don't know the story, Viggo plays Tom Stall, a mild mannered diner owner in a small Indiana town. He lives a simple life with his wife and two kids, until two ruthless killers show up in his diner to rob the joint.
Tom not only prevents the robbery, but kills both dudes almost effortlessly.
He ends up with a lot of unwanted media attention which attracts some mob guys to town who think he's a former comrade of theirs.
SPOILERS!!!

It would have been nice for the film to have gotten more into why Tom left his old life behind. This is probably something that the graphic novel the movie is based on delves into (anybody read it?).
There's a little bit of conflict between Tom and his wife and Tom and his son after his past comes into play. The kid that plays Tom's son is the standout here. He's a typical insecure teenager who idolizes his father and is trying to make his own path in the world. He has a couple of scenes that make the audience wonder if a violent nature is hereditary because I'm sure Tom didn't teach him advanced fighting techniques a la Bruce and Brandon Lee.
The climax of the film is a little anti-climactic, but at the same time the final scene of the movie, which has no dialogue says everything it needs to say about where the family is going after Tom's past life catches up with him and he deals with it in the only way he knows how.
Good flick for what it was, like I said before.

"...most sistahs only recognize a good man when he's a character in a shitty movie, a shitty play, their favorite daytime soap or a shitty book written by a homosexual."
From Reggie Eggert's online review of "Diary of a Mad Black Woman"