The End of Violence

The End of Violence follows Mike, a Hollywood producer who has built his career on brutal action films, and his neglected wife Paige, who is drifting toward leaving him. Two men are hired to kill Mike, but the scheme goes wrong: he escapes and goes into hiding, while the would-be killers turn up dead. A police detective, Doc, investigates the disappearance, and his path crosses that of Cat, an actress working on one of Mike's productions. Meanwhile, Ray, a surveillance expert, watches the city through a secret monitoring project and begins to sense that he is being observed as well.

Wim Wenders directed this drama-thriller, the eleventh of the twenty-two films he has directed in chronological order, following Beyond the Clouds and preceding Buena Vista Social Club. Nicholas Klein wrote the screenplay, and Wenders and Klein produced with Deepak Nayar. Bill Pullman plays Mike, with Andie MacDowell as Paige, Gabriel Byrne as Ray, Loren Dean as Doc, Traci Lind as Cat and Daniel Benzali as Phelps, among a credited cast of thirty-five. The film was a modest international production made for about 5 million US dollars.

Audience response has been muted: on IMDb it holds 5.6 out of 10 from around 5,600 votes, and on TMDB 5.4 out of 10 from 79 votes. A film critics' rating of 5.2 out of 10 from thirty-five reviews places critical opinion close to the audience scores.