I'm sure there could be a number of people who were ready to play the main characters, but besides that point, I don't think it was a film about Americas fascination with violence. I found it to be a story of a man with an existential dilemma. a Battle between what he once was and who he is now; that despite his attempts as anonymity, he could not escape the past because the past was part of his existential project, hence his attempt to delude the past was an act of Sartrian bad faith. The film also seems to touch basis on the biology of violence, whether it is learned or passed on through genes in respect to the pacifistic, reasonable son in the film. Yet the dynamic of violence is also intertwined with sex and death with respect to the relationship between the main character and his wife, taking on a Bataillian relationship between violence, sex, death and orgasm.