The man looks up from the table and looks into his wife's eyes. She looks back. His expression changes. What did he see in those eyes now, after everything that has happened? That question lingers on our minds as the scene cuts to black.
There are many looks exchanged in A History of Violence, many words, smiles, punches, and gun shots are also exchanged. But not history, not truth. That comes walking in through the front door of Stall's Diner and tries to rob it. Tom Stall reacts - as he thinks anyone would - by killing the two men that try to rob the diner. That one act of violence leads to another. Mobsters come to town to pay Tom a visit. To them, Tom is someone else, someone named Joey, a man who used to be very good at killing people. Soon Tom is killing more people. Tom's son is getting into fights and then killing people himself. Now Tom must open up about his history, his truth to Edie his wife. Eventually that truth brings Tom/Joey back to his past. The violence continues until almost everyone is dead, except Tom, or, it Joey that lives?
At the end, when the man, not even sure himself if he is Joey or Tom, looks at his wife, he's looking for the love he has been able to see in her eyes for him. Does he see it? He doesn't expect it when he walks in the door. He lingers there in the doorway, waiting. Sarah, his daughter, sets a plate for him, he sits down and waits, looking down a the table. The son passes the food to the father. Both children forgive. But what about Edie? Her look, is it anger, is it love through sorrow? It's difficult to decipher, as is the look on Tom's face when the scene cuts out. By cutting to black before words can clarify how she feels, the audience is given an open ending to ponder. It is the most important part of this film. It does not tell you if what he did is right or wrong. Was it wrong for him to lie about his life before Edie? Did he make up for any of it by being a good husband, a good father, and a good citizen after he stopped being Joey? It doesn't matter. None of it matters unless his wife, Edie, can love him.
Despite that fantastic ending, there is a lot of useless crap in this movie. The beginning, where the thugs murder two people and a little girl at a motel was extraneous. Couldn't we see that the two of them were crazy just by how they acted when they tried robbing the diner? We didn't need to see that they were on a murdering spree. That was only and easy way to make Tom's actions seem justified. When the little girl wakes up complaining about "monsters" and her father tells he there are no real ones, well, you know he will be proven to be a liar in a matter of moments. And in what family does everyone get up and comfort the little girl when she wakes in the middle of the night? I guess only those in happy small town land. Couldn't they all just have had breakfast and said how much they loved each other instead of that crappy scene? But worst of all of the Tom and family scenes was that horrible love scene where Edie and Tom act out teenage shenanigans that they never had. Why would anyone want that? Maybe all of these scenes were actually made to seem false because, in the diegesis, they were false. Tom really wasn't the happy family man. There are monsters, and Tom probably had wild teenage sex with some other girl, even if he does deny it later. At least the angry sex scene later was better at conveying both of their mixed emotions after Tom came clean to Edie about his past.
What I think I'm trying to convey is that this movies is sometimes hard to decipher. It's hard not to like it because of that ending, but it can so easily be interpreted as a sloppy piece of film making. Watch it and decide for yourself.