Details

Release year: 2005

Storyline

A mild-mannered man becomes a local hero through an act of violence, which sets off repercussions that will shake his family to its very core.

Top credits

Directors

David Cronenberg

Writers

Cast

Viggo Mortensen — Tom Stall
Maria Bello — Edie Stall
Ed Harris — Carl Fogarty
William Hurt — Richie Cusack

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Awards

0 wins & 2 nominations

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Did you know

• During an interview, Viggo Mortensen stated that during the shooting of the first bar scene with Ed Harris he could not stop laughing, and as a result, the scene had to be re-shot several times. Due to Viggo Mortensen's behavior, Ed Harris completed the scene without pants; he only wore his underwear, yet this cannot be seen as the bar table impedes our view. Thus, Viggo Mortensen had to act seriously while Ed Harris was not wearing any pants, and this is the scene that is used in the movie.

• For the sex scene on the stairs, David Cronenberg was concerned about the two actors getting hurt on the hard wooden steps. He asked his stunt man whether or not he had any stunt pads to soften up the stairs. The stunt man laughed, saying that in the twenty years he had been working as a stunt man, no director had ever asked him for stunt pads for a sex scene. Pads were not used for most of the scene however, and in the shot when Edie is naked on the bed with bruises visible on her back, make-up was used to hide the amount of bruises that Maria Bello received from the scene.

• The mobsters were originally supposed to be Italian-Americans, but after the casting of Ed Harris and William Hurt, David Cronenberg decided to change the mob to Irish-Americans, giving Viggo's character the Irish surname Cusack. He felt that Mortensen, Harris, and Hurt wouldn't make convincing Italian-Americans. Mortensen did play an Italian-American in Green Book (2018), some 13 years later.