Brilliantly about violence without glorifying violence No, not for children, but mesmerizing and brilliant, exposing violence in all its hideousness; never glorifying it, even for a moment. Viggo Mortensen is turning out to be one of the most remarkable actors of our time, right up there with Johnny Depp and Gary Oldman. The subtle changes he achieves in his performance are so incredible that you really have to see the film more than once to get the full range. Everybody's excellent. Cronenberg, as always, is superb in his direction, delivering something utterly surprising moment to moment, and consistently thrilling artistically in spite of the most jarring shocks. Highly recommended to those who have a special fascination for the way violence is handled in film or any art form, which means that the title is right on. The pace is perfect. I rank it with the HBO series Deadwood for being a trip into Hell in which we see souls wrestling with absolutes and determined to achieve moral triumphs, in spite of overwhelming odds. I want to see the film a third time to better understand the relationship of the high school sequence to the major theme of the film.