Music, Style & Culture

Straw Dogs

Despite the problems inherent in both versions, Straw Dogs remains an intriguing drama.

Released in cinemas 4th November 2011.

This glossy Hollywood remake of Sam Peckinpah's controversial 1971 shocker is a basic imitation that skirts nervously around the film's dodgier moments.

A siege thriller and psychological drama, it relocates the action from Cornwall to the Deep South, which is the perfect setting for the hick vs. intellectual two-way snobbery. The pacificist husband role is played by James Marsden as screenwriter David (Dustin Hoffman’s character was a mathematician), who moves to the hometown of his actress wife Amy (Kate Bosworth).

David sticks out like a sore thumb, attracting the cunning derision of Amy's passive-aggressive high school sweetheart Charlie (Alexander Skarsgard). When Charlie starts work renovating Amy's childhood home, it becomes an escalating battle between machismo and reason. Charlie, driven by his feelings for Amy, manipulates the couple, before a local tragedy leads the town's more unbalanced folk to lay gruesome siege to David and Amy's home.

Writer and director Rod Lurie keeps the story primal, with Amy a fascinating and troubling character disgusted by both Charlie's and his buddies' leering - despite later inviting it - and by David's suggestion that she should cover up. For all the territorial pissing contests, Amy is key in Lurie's film as it clumsily examines gender politics, and the role of men in a marriage. It is heavily implied she craves a "real" man, as opposed to her prissy bookish husband, which becomes problematic during the story's rape. The 1971 scene was so butchered by the BBFC it left Susan George's Amy in a "no really meant yes" situation. Today, Lurie almost pays homage to the ambiguity by shooting Bosworth's face flickering with what looks like pleasure. He also worryingly eroticises the rape scene by lingering on Skarsgard's abs as he removes his shirt in a seductive manner. Someone may have got away with this bullshit in the Seventies, and elsewhere a more fiercely intelligent and thought-provoking film could be built around this scenario. However, a throwaway action flick is not the place to position such an irresponsible scene, especially now female debasement is an everyday factor in popular culture.

Back to the story, and when the vital subplot with the local simpleton (Dominic Purcell) is completely mangled beyond logic, involving yet another troubling female character (in Blackwater, all young women are clearly succubi), Straw Dogs kicks off with its orgy of violence as David fights back against the hicks, defending his honour more than his wife. The violence, all boiling oil and bear traps, is chicken feed today, but is at least well-staged, and strangely hilarious at times.

Although Lurie can't bring more to the table, at least he does it competently. He's aided by a well-picked cast, with Bosworth particularly interesting as the charming homegirl who prickles as David struggles to find his feet in the country. Skarsgard is terrific as the layered villain, given a sympathetic side. Marsden doesn't quite go on the rage-induced journey of self-awareness and come out the bloodthirsty maniac, but as the peaceful David he is good value. James Woods is thoroughly OTT as the town drunk, who fuels the showdown.

Despite the problems inherent in both versions, Straw Dogs remains an intriguing drama, if one lacking in genuine thrills.

Rating: 6/10