Straw Dogs Review

Writer-Director Rod Lurie's remake of Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs is different from the original, but not necessarily better. It's a remake that exists only to cash-in on a library title's name recognition and exploitable premise.

Lurie's film centers on screenwriter David Sumner (the underrated James Marsden) and his actress wife Amy (Kate Bosworth) who are relocating to Amy's back-water home town, all so David can write a movie about Stalingrad and so Amy can... go jogging without a bra and make sweating look sexy apparently. The barn on David's property needs a new roof, and it just so happens that Amy's ex-boyfriend, Charlie (True Blood's Alexander Skarsgard), is a roofer. The choice to hire Charlie and his redneck hunting buddies for the job soon becomes the worst decision David's ever made.

Charlie's attraction to Amy, David's increasing inability to acclimate to "the way of things" and a subplot concerning a mentally-handicapped local's interactions with a 15-year-old girl take the movie into very dark, but very obvious places. Eventually, David has to use deadly force to defend his wife, his home and his manhood (and not in that order).

The original film treated the above with a certain degree of subtlety and ambiguity; relishing the slow burn that's inherent in a story about a marginalized man finding out just how far he can be pushed before he pushes back. Peckinpah left more to be interpreted subtextually, whereas Lurie is all text. The movie lays on its conflicts pretty thick; the Southern town its set in seems built on stereotypes and obviousness. It's surprising then that, for a movie so overt in its execution, Straw Dogs can't quite decide on what type of movie it wants to be.

A Southern drama about a marriage under fire and a man under siege? An action-revenge pic? When the movie does settle on an identity - the Death Wish of home invasion thrillers – - we realize it took an awfully long and largely unsatisfying route to get there.


There is also this weird Right Wing vs. Liberal undercurrent to the proceedings. It boils over in the not-too-subtle divisions between hero and villain(s), between stranger and strange land. We get it: It's City Boy vs. Redneck. Bud Light and Jaguar vs. Budweiser and pick-up truck. The town sets its watch to Friday Night Lights football and Sunday service. The more our hero tries to fit into this world, the more he stands out. Worse, the more the town pushes him out. While the result is very nail-on-the-head, it's also effective in so much that we can't stop rooting for the villains to meet their deserved bloody ends.

The final showdown does culminate in some primal, inventive kills without shortchanging the characters involved. Marsden, Bosworth and Skarsgard are more than able to satisfy the demands of this material, giving the movie better than it deserves. Marsden is a stronger, more likable David than Dustin Hoffman was in the original. He's not quite a white knight, and he's not quite a badass. David's defined by his intelligence, but is there enough here to buy that he can set up booby traps and engage in adrenaline-fueled murder one minute, and then awkwardly girl-punch his attacker the next?

Skarsgard shows significant acting chops as the primary villain. (Let's just forget the marketing campaign's posters selling his character as one of the sexiest rapists ever.)

And yes, the rape scene. The original's most infamous scene gets a significant tonal change here. I won't spoil the details, but I will say that the scene is the best of Bosworth's career, as is her overall performance in the film. If you've found her cold in other films, you'll definitely reconsider her acting chops here.


If only the direction was as solid as the acting. Straw Dogs' limited successes and glaring failures rest solely on Lurie. Lurie is a competent filmmaker still feeling out what his style is. He knows his way in and out of scenes, he can direct actors and write the occasional memorable line of dialogue, but overall there's a very journeyman feel to it. It's not necessarily going through the motions, but it's definitely next door to that.

Lurie's script hits its marks, but there's nothing entirely memorable or exciting about the way in which it does it. There's also nothing terribly offensive here either. Straw Dogs sat on a shelf for a year before its release, and continues to take up space as early-Fall filler entertainment. It's a mediocre jolt of a revenge drama that favors in-your-face storytelling over the ambiguity of the original. That may satisfy on the surface, but like the rest of the movie, it doesn't leave much worth revisiting after the end credits roll.

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