From the outset of A History of Violence, director David Cronen-berg's latest thesis on the sheer brutality that underlies the American dream, there is a raw, almost feckless tension that ripples through every scene. I'm not talking about the atmosphere of dread that pervades this staccato bloodbath of a film, the conflicts between small town virtue and big-city vengeance, or present happiness and past demons, that lend the movie something of a moral compass. No, the suspense lies in something else: the unashamed, potentially disastrous ambition of Cronenberg's project itself.

The best way to regard A History of Violence is as the fusion of two schools of contemporary filmmaking thought, which quite frequently have threatened to rage out of control. What we have here is a cross between stylized murder sagas like Kill Bill and the various carnage fests that have followed in their wake, and representative, half-realistic Americana dramas like 21 Grams and House of Sand and Fog. Hoping and praying that Cronenberg, familiar with gratuitous violence as he is, can steer A History of Violence clear of each genre's clich5fs can keep you on the edge of your seat. But for those of you who would prefer for me to kill the drama, this is simply one of the more powerful movies that has been released so far this year -- due largely to its near-perfect cast and well-placed explosions of silver screen gore.

One almost gets the sense that Cronenberg had a load of fun gluing together his scale model of main street U.S.A. only to blast it apart with one gun battle after another. Based on the graphic novel by John Wagner and Vince Locke, A History of Violence opens with a deadpan shot of two men (Greg Bryk and Stephen McHattie) emerging from a roadside motel -- sunny, quiet -- a little too quiet. From their pithy conversation, the camera segues to the motel office, littered with the corpses and pools of blood that the pair have left in their wake. Only a few minutes in, we are looking at the long and short of the film's rhythm -- a build of unease, rapidly topped off with violent epiphanies.

These criminals show up later on, during closing time at the storefront diner that Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) owns and operates in rural Indiana. Your archetypal family man, Tom spends his days like any upstanding farm country citizen -- defending his little daughter (Heidi Hayes) from bad dreams, giving pep talks to his teenage son (Ashton Holmes) and having sublimely corny sex with his lawyer wife (Maria Bello). But when he dispenses with both of the would-be killers, saving his customers in a beautifully choreographed burst of gunfire, Tom is touted on television and in the newspapers as a local hero. Cronenberg could have spent the rest of the time dwelling on Tom's reluctant fame and the publicity that rocks his little Norman Rockwell microcosm, but, as the title should make clear to everyone, there is much more killing ahead.

Only when Philadelphia crime lord Carl Fogarty (Ed Harris, every inch the point-blank Mafioso psychopath) comes to town, believing he has a score to settle with Tom, does the menace reach full pitch. Finally, the stage is set for the questions about Tom's past, the personal conflict between outward goodness and inner evil that are A History of Violence's patent talking points. Here, violence is not simply a freak event -- it is a contagion that can break into even the most unwilling corners of modern life, whether out of choice or necessity.

Good ideas, yes, but when every movie from Dead Man Walking to The Apostle has gone after the same kind of character struggle, you can't help but say "been there, done that" and wait for the smash-bang orchestration to start up again.

With surprising effect, A History of Violence takes the habitual milieu of schlock cinema and sends it hurtling towards a much higher standard of drama. The skill here is in the handling -- whether Bello's bait and switch from domestic worry to half-angered resolve, or Harris' dead-on faux affability. Yet, more than anything, this is a showcase for Mortensen's dramatic range. If Cronenberg has accomplished anything, it is to tout the intelligence with which his leading man combines whole-hearted heroics with a seedy, wiry elusiveness.

I will admit that this isn't half as fun as your average Tarantino -- few oddities and fewer laughs. Instead, A History of Violence has decided to revel in the get-up-and-cheer, adrenaline-happy kind of spectacle that requires a distinct emotional atmosphere and excessively synchronized plotting. When he zooms in on the lagoons of carnage and twitching face wounds that his characters strew across the film's scenes, Cronenberg has a way of sickening your senses -- at the very same time that he draws you on towards ever bloodier spectacle.

Few films -- at least, films that don't appear on Scorsese's curriculum vitae--can capably combine full-throttle theatrics with a dystopic spin on good old American society. Light on innovative scripting, but pounding and screaming with layered drama, A History of Volence just might deserve to stand among the finest in its class.

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