[...] he tackles French — as well the power of silence — in Venice Film Festival entry "Far From Men," a stark story about two men, a schoolteacher and a murderer, caught up in Algeria's war for independence. Mortensen — tanned, muscular and radiating energy while meeting reporters in Venice — said he chooses roles for the chances they give him to study, learn and gain new skills. Daru would rather offer the doomed Mohamed (French actor Reda Kateb, who was in "Zero Dark Thirty") the chance to escape, but the prisoner is stubbornly reluctant to avoid death. Mortensen, who was born in New York to Danish and American parents and spent part of his childhood in in Argentina, said he identified with "a certain displaced quality" in the film characters. The physical thread continues in his upcoming "Captain Fantastic," about a self-sufficient family struggling to adjust to urban life. Throughout his career, Mortensen, 55, has moved between blockbusters such as "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy — he played Aragorn — and edgier fare like David Cronenberg's Russian gangster story "Eastern Promises" and Freudian drama "A Dangerous Method."