If there’s a unifying concern in all of Fincher’s films, it’s the question of whether we can really get past the horrible things we’ve done and the horrible things that have been done to us in the past. No movie illustrates that point better than David Cronenberg’s acclaimed “A History of Violence.”

Viggo Mortensen, fresh off “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, stars as Tom Stall, an unassuming Indiana family man who owns and operates a diner. When two criminals burst in and threaten to shoot his patrons, he leaps into action, saves the day, and is hailed as a hero. The story eventually makes its way to the national news cycle, but it’s not the attention Tom wants. A man (Ed Harris) who says he knows Tom by a different name shows up in town and begins to keep tabs on Tom’s wife, Edie (Maria Bello), and kids, who — despite his promises to the contrary — suspect he may in fact be hiding something. As Tom reckons with his own past, he sees flashes of himself in his teenage son, Jack, who’s getting in trouble for fighting at school. The disruption of their everyday life also has a surprising effect on Tom and Edie’s relationship. 

Cronenberg’s signature movies (“The Fly,” “Videodrome,” for example) veer into a lane so idiosyncratically absurdist and degenerative that the term Cronenbergian exists among film buffs to describe it. In contrast, “A History of Violence” is aggressively normal … until it’s just aggressive. That renders it all the more thrilling and poignant in its commentary on the human capacity for good, evil, and everything in between.